


sunset & vine

by tastybaby



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Angst, Being Heartbroken and Slutty at Work, Casual Sex Work, Clubbing, Hollywood AU, Hurt/Comfort, Legal Marijuana use, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Pokemon AU, Romantic Trips to the Gas Station, Roommates, Slow Burn, Smoking, sex with the ex, unhealthy past relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26070373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastybaby/pseuds/tastybaby
Summary: After a painful breakup with his now-ex-girlfriend, Raihan is in search of a roommate to take over the rest of the lease with him. It's difficult to find someone who will be able to align with his late-night streaming schedule, but Hollywood is full of all kinds of people.Piers is something of an enigma, and Raihan desperately wants to know more.
Relationships: Background Sonia/Leon, Kibana | Raihan/Nezu | Piers, Some Klara/Raihan, Some Oleana/Raihan
Comments: 83
Kudos: 158





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I figured it was time to challenge myself to write a real Slow Burn.. I still don't know if I'm going to pull it off, so I made it as easy as possible by putting them in California and making it a modern day/real life universe AU, lol. Not every bit of this is going to be from Raihan's POV!

“That’s the last of it,” Raihan delivered, mouth in a thin line, hands in his pockets. “Thanks for doin’ this.”

“It’s not _your_ fault she isn’t willing to do it herself,” Sonia spoke with annoyance, venom that wasn’t directed at him, but still nowhere close to subtle. She shoved the last box of Oleana’s things into her blue sedan, closing the door less-than-carefully. 

“She’s booked all weekend,” Raihan shrugged. “She’ll give me an earful if her stuff doesn’t arrive in one piece, so go easy on your right turns, alright?” He laughed, but Sonia’s face was still serious, leaning against the door and twirling her finger in her hair the way she always did when she was thinking. 

“You haven’t got to be so _cordial_ , love, she’s not here,” she worried. “Are you sure you don’t want to come? I won’t make you get out of the car or anything, and I can buy you dinner after.”

“Nah, I gotta meet with someone who wants to rent the other room,” Raihan resigned to stretching his arms back and folding them behind his head. “Don’t really wanna see her new place, either. And I should be buying _you_ dinner, really. Thanks again for all of,” he gestured to her car, “this.”

“Anytime,” Sonia pulled him into a hug. She rubbed his back and squeezed him. “You’d do the same for me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Raihan eased. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to. The end of a relationship was a messy and painful thing, no matter how mutually the connection was severed. Roping other people into it was painful. He wouldn’t wish this feeling on anyone.

He watched her cute little car bump and shift over the uneven pavement on this stretch of Sunset Boulevard. His watch read 2:15, which meant he had about fifteen minutes to sweep before the guy from Craigslist was supposed to show up.

Raihan wasn’t a slob by any means, but moving all of his streaming equipment out of the spare room and all of Oleana’s things out was dusty work. 

It was almost creepy how meticulously she had gone through every item—even individual pieces of silverware—and picked out nearly everything she ever paid for. It stung to see the couches without all the soft throw blankets he was so accustomed to, but he was grateful to at least keep the furniture. He made a mental note to shop around for something comfortable to replace them. 

What was he doing? Vacuuming. The new one was still in the box and needed to be assembled, but he had time. Probably. 

Craigslist guy said he was running late, which was fine, because Raihan realized he was going to have to organize the bathroom a little bit more. He was just about finished wiping down the mirror when he heard a short, sharp knock at the door. 

He quickly shoved his empty burger wrappers from lunch into the trash and made his way to him.

“Hey, man, thanks for coming,” he said pleasantly. On the other side of the door was one of the most neatly haggard people he’d seen in the city.

He had no idea how this guy had managed to survive the Los Angeles sun, with skin so ghostly pale that it almost looked fake. Clearly not well, because the dark circles under his eyes almost looked like bruises. He was wearing makeup that seemed to accentuate it rather than hide it, which Raihan sort of admired. Maybe he could ask him for some tips some time—he was always looking to fine-tune his own look anyway, but Oleana had only ever been able to help him with one specific look, and she always just did it herself instead of letting him play around. 

This guy was also sporting one hell of a slouch, to the point where he had to actually straighten up quite a bit to even look at Raihan at all. When he did, he saw a choker fastened around his neck with some sort of cool charm on it, a bunch of chains tangled around and draped artfully over his collarbones, and a mess of piercings in either of his ears. He had on some distressed black jeans that Raihan himself probably couldn’t fit an arm through and two full sleeves of tattoos that he almost mistook for a black undershirt under his tee.

He figured he was kind of an alt guy, based on the nail polish, the all-black look, and the general gloomy atmosphere he had going on, but nothing was a better indication than his hair.

Raihan had been in Hollywood for a few years. He’d seen women with extensions all the way down to their ass, but this guy had them beat with hair that could probably reach his knees. It was tied up in the most tortuously heavy ponytail he’d ever seen in his life, covering both his shoulders and cascading down his back like a cape. It was enormous and looked like it was going to burst out of its restraints any minute. 

Cool blue eyes blinked back up at him. Perhaps he’d spent a little too long staring. They were round and cute, looking bored and yet curious, but Raihan filed that thought away. _None of that, please, brain._

It had been a while since he was newly-single, but he knew he was going to need more time than a few days to get back on the prowl, and a new roommate was _not_ the place to start looking for a rebound.

“Hey,” Raihan’s guest replied, with a raspy and intriguing voice, sticking out a hand. “Nice meetin’ ya. I’m Piers.”

Oh? So he was a scouser? He didn’t meet too many people from his home country out here. Raihan grinned and shook it firmly. 

“Raihan. You’re from Liverpool?”

“Yeah,” Piers almost looked embarrassed, like recognizing his regional dialect was some sort of compliment. Raihan realized that it might have been rude to bring something like that up, but he was just excited to meet another person from the same corner of the world as him. The only other one in the city he knew was Sonia. Piers rearranged his fringe and let his eyes scroll to the side. “You’re from Oxford?” 

“Most people just assume London, nice catch,” he stepped to the side, inviting him inside. 

“I know a posh bloke when I hear one,” Piers smiled at him. Oof, he was a little charming. That’s okay. He could have a charming roommate and live. The guy was clearly one to fluster easily anyway. 

He showed him around. Piers followed him politely through the kitchen, didn’t say much, but did ask about his schedule. 

“Oh, yeah, that’s kind of important, actually. Uh, I work from home,” Raihan started with the age-old explanation of his lucrative career, but Piers looked to be about his age. “I’m usually streaming, like, four or five days a week. Generally Wednesday through Sunday. I mentioned in the listing that my work tends to go late, but I usually don’t get too loud. I’d be happy to install some extra soundproofing if it becomes an issue, though. That okay?”

“I’m pro’bly up later’n you in my line’a work anyway,” Piers shrugged. “Doubt there’ll be any issue.” 

Raihan waited for him to go on, to talk about himself or what that line of work may be, but Piers didn’t say anything more, so he kept going.

“Room’s over here,” he gestured, opening the door and leading him inside. “Feel free to look around.”

He stood aside while Piers scrutinized every inch of the room with such detail that Raihan was relieved he’d just vacuumed. He checked the closet and seemed to be measuring something with his hands, opened and closed the windows a few times, fiddled with the blinds...all in silence. After he was done, he turned to Raihan.

“This’ll do.”

“Cool,” Raihan found it amusing how detailed this guy was. “Oh, and laundry’s in the closet over this way.” 

Piers’s face tried to light up, but he stopped himself halfway or something, because he was looking at Raihan like he’d just handed him six month’s rent. Man, his eyes seriously were big. He supposed it wasn’t uncommon for a fellow LA resident to get that excited about the prospect of not having to haul everything to the local barely-functioning laundromat, but still, there was a childlike wonder in Piers’s eyes that he hadn’t expected to see. 

They went through the rest of it—the bathroom, where Piers’s storage space for toiletries would be, parking spaces, elevator codes, where Raihan kept the mail keys, and eventually, the leasing. 

They had just signed the lease a month ago. Oleana was already off of it—lovely of her to wait until after they’d signed for another year to decide to leave—but Piers would need to be added on retroactively. 

“The leasing office already knows. I just have to give them an email and they’ll have you do everything through the portal or something. If you decide you wanna live here.” 

“Nice place,” Piers added politely. “‘M definitely interested. You meetin’ with anyone else? When should I expect t’hear from you?”

“Nah, don’t worry about any of that. Everyone else who responded was either a bot, or a sugar daddy, or both,” he laughed. He assumed that his schedule scared a lot of people off, or that the rent price he’d listed seemed too good to be true. He really didn’t need _that_ much help with it, maybe about a third of the total cost for the unit, but he already had all of his things in the living room and the bigger bedroom, so a third seemed fair to him. That, and he wasn’t very good at living alone. 

“You weren’t in the market for a daddy t’spoil ya? That’s a s’prise,” Piers teased comfortably, looking him up and down. Raihan laughed at that, well aware that he had the quintessential influencer-stink about him. It was nice to see that this guy had a sense of humor. 

“Believe it or not, right now, I’m not terribly interested in a relationship,” Raihan started, faltering awkwardly, and tried to salvage it before the pause became too wide. “...With a man twice my age.” 

God, he hated this stage. It took all of his self discipline to _not_ mention that he’d just gotten his heart broken by someone he thought was his forever-girl. What was it about hurting that made you feel like you just needed to _tell_ everyone you met? He really needed to get better at keeping this under wraps. Piers was watching him with a calculating look in his eyes, clearly not buying it, and Raihan felt like he was going to squirm from the pressure.

“Anyway,” Piers gracefully didn’t linger, giving the hallway another scan.

“Oh, sorry, one more thing,” Raihan rubbed the back of his neck. “This is gonna sound totally fake, but streaming is my full-time job, and I do a lot of filming here for social media, so… If you end up in any of it by accident, I’ll just cut you out. ‘Cause my, jeez, my _fans_ tend to be kinda nosy. I wanna respect your privacy.” 

Another huge point of tension between him and his ex-girlfriend. She hated the spotlight and wanted nothing to do with it, which he respected, but it was also hard for him to lie and say he was single all the time. He couldn’t celebrate her or talk about her at all on camera, and every time he went live, he had to do a sweep of the office to make sure there weren’t any traces of her around. Raihan was a positive person; he liked sharing his joy with others, and even though he was still much more private about his life than other people in his industry, he still mourned the missed opportunity to share that joy with his little community.

Obviously, a roommate was different. Piers and him would probably be friends at most—hopefully they could be friends—so he wouldn’t have to worry about not accidentally gushing about him or pausing awkwardly between “my” and “friend” while telling a story about something he’d done. Piers was a flashy dude, he was sure he was going to have something to say about him, even if just in abstract. 

“That’s fine, thanks,” Piers said unreadably. At least he seemed cool with it. 

“So I should get goin’,” he heard Piers say, but he wasn’t directly looking at Raihan anymore. “When you make a decision, you can just shoot me a text at the number you’ve got an’ uh, yeah.”

Oh. Right. Raihan hadn’t actually _told_ him that he’d already decided he’d be a good fit. He worked late, which meant he didn’t have to worry about keeping quiet for anyone. He clearly wasn’t a fan or didn’t know who Raihan was, he was polite, and _maybe_ Raihan should make more of an effort to get to know him before agreeing to live with him, but he was really curious about this guy, and he seemed shy, so…what better way than to have him move in?

The logic wasn’t completely sound, but Raihan paid it no mind. He wanted a roommate, Piers seemed cool, and he didn’t want to keep him waiting if there wasn’t any reason to. 

“I’ve made a decision,” Raihan stuck out his hand again. “Room’s empty. You can move in whenever you want. Text me your email and I’ll pass it along to the leasing office.” 

Piers hit him with what would probably be the first of many disarmingly bright, handsome smiles and shook his hand. 

“Cheers, mate.”

“Cheers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes they do live in an apartment complex on Sunset & Vine. You've solved my title puzzle.
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, here I go again with the day-later update. Whoops.

Raihan had offered to help him move, which was nice and all, but he was moving from all the way out in Glendale, and, frankly, he was embarrassed by how few belongings he had. In some lucky pull he’d managed to _save_ money by moving to Hollywood, since his commute to his bartending job would shrink considerably, and therefore the amount of money he pumped into his car would decrease. After his next paycheck, he was going to be able to get a bedframe, and maybe even a new set of strings for his guitar. That would be nice.

He had his bandmates to help him move, luckily while Raihan had taken off to go shopping. The mattress, desk, and the boxes full of clothes were in by noon, and he was able to fit most of it in the elevator with a little extra effort. He also managed to shove his guitar into the back seat of his car and haul it, along with his ridiculously heavy, ancient amp, into his room. He had a few groceries in a cooler and was just finishing putting them on his side of the fridge when Raihan came home with an arm full of IKEA bags.

“Hey,” he greeted him, adjusting the position of his carton of eggs.

“Hey! All moved in?” Raihan set his things down and fished through them. “I got you a housewarming gift.” Piers froze. He didn’t get anything for Raihan, nor did he really have the means to do so, and here his new roommate was, paying most of the rent _and_ getting him gifts.

“I don’t know what you like, but I saw you wear makeup, so,” Raihan brandished a shoebox-sized package with some swedish words on them, holding it out for him. “It’s an acrylic organizer! It was super cute, and when I saw it, I thought, well, maybe you could use it.”

Piers took it wordlessly, watching Raihan’s expectant expression and begging him to stop waiting for a reaction. He didn’t have one. Strangers didn’t usually buy him gifts.

“Thanks, mate,” Piers managed politely. “S’gonna whip up some scran in a minute, you’re uh, well, you’re welcome to a plate if it suits you.” Offering him food was about the best he could do. He was a pretty decent cook—a hobby he picked up out of necessity but came to like—and he wouldn’t mind sharing some of his food with Raihan to thank him.

“Ah, wish I could. I’m actually treating my friend to dinner tonight for a favor she did me last week,” Raihan rolled back his shoulders. Piers wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. “Appreciate it though! You’ll have the place to yourself pretty much as soon as I’m done putting out all this stuff.”

“No problem then. Thanks.”

Of course he didn’t want to eat Piers’s home cooking, he had enough money to actually enjoy the diverse and incredible restaurants all over the city. Obviously. He felt like an idiot for asking, so he stuck his burning face into the fridge like he was looking for something and uttered another thank-you for the gift. As soon as all the food was put away, he fled to his room and flopped down on his mattress.

The thing was ancient. It was hard, and it sunk, but it was one of the first things he’d bought when he moved to the U.S. and he’d saved like hell to be able to stop spending his nights in a sleeping bag. He paid for it with the money from his first real american show with the band—an opening set at a punk club in Hollywood—and a sock drawer full of tips from bartending and other miscellaneous, non-music gigs. His ears were red when he showed up to the woman’s house to pay for it in singles, but this was California, and she probably saw the size of his waist and didn’t think twice about it.

He looked over to his “vanity,” which was a discount store mirror leaning precariously on an old console table with a folding chair in front of it. His bathroom storage space was all occupied with the litany of hair products he needed, including the bleach he used to fry his roots until they turned white and the multiple stores of beauty supply generic conditioner that he considered his lifeblood. Therefore, all non-hair and non-shower items had been banished to the drawers of the vanity. His fingers drummed over the box Raihan gave him.

Turned out, his new roommate either had a knack for gift-giving, or he just happened to get a lucky swing with this one. All the little pencils, bottles and powders looked pleasingly organized in their new home and Piers touched each one delicately, appreciating them and how they all had a place, now, even if the text had rubbed off of most of them, or they were dirty and needed replacing. They still deserved to be stored with dignity, he thought, and this was a nice way to do so.

He ducked out of his room to throw away the packaging—figuring he’d keep the box—when Raihan stopped him.

“Come check out the living room,” he invited him with a smile, and Piers thought it rude to decline, so he followed him.

When he’d come to see the place originally, the living room had been pretty sparse. All the essentials were there, like a coffee table, a nice entertainment center, and of course, the standard couch-and-loveseat combo. He had just chalked the lack of decor up to Raihan’s personal preference, but upon entering the room again, he realized he had vastly underestimated the man’s sense of style.

It wasn’t bad, actually. Just completely out of character for the person Piers had been imagining in his head. There were these soft, what looked like chunky knitted black blankets hanging over the back of both couches, folded neatly and inviting; peeking out behind a new series of plush-looking throw pillows in varying colors and textures, but all matching, somehow. A new white lantern-style lamp in the corner of the room caught his attention, with a few air plants (possibly fake?) sitting proudly on the built-in shelf that was set between its legs. A new end table that Raihan had found the time to build somewhere in the hour or so Piers had spent brooding in his bedroom, some extra string lights fastened to the walls, and a new set of curtains to replace the blinds that covered the window-door to the balcony. It looked cozy, if he was being honest with himself.

“Looks great,” Piers dared to take a few steps further into the room. “Really did all this y’self, eh?” The lighting everywhere was warm, which contrasted nicely with the cool blacks and greys of most of the furniture, and worked well with the gold and white accents.

“Yeah, thanks. My—my last roommate did most of the decorating, so I never really had a chance. I can see why she liked it so much!” Raihan fidgeted behind him. He allowed him a moment to himself and didn’t check to see what he was up to. “You’re welcome to hang out here whenever you’d like.”

“I’ll keep tha’ in mind,” Piers looked around with discomfort, eager to get back to the safety and solitude of his bedroom. He wasn’t keen on the idea of lounging around on a couch that he didn’t spare a penny for, much less any of its embellishments. He’d looked up the complex online and saw the _real_ price one of these units went for, which was obscene, and that Raihan was barely charging him a fraction of it.

Therefore, their space was nowhere near a 50/50 split, and it would only be fair for him to only interact with his fair share of it. That basically included his bedroom, the kitchen when he needed it, and the bathroom when he needed it.

People didn’t charge so little for this kind of thing unless they weren’t planning on sharing the space, which Piers didn’t mind at all. He had what he was owed, and Raihan didn’t have to make a show of offering him anything else. He could run out to the car park if he needed a smoke break, and plug his headphones into his amp when he wanted to practice, but other than that, he didn’t take up much space.

Speaking of a smoke break, it was about time, so he grabbed the pack from his coat in his room and whatever shitty plastic lighter he could find, shoved it into his pockets, and grabbed the bin liner from the kitchen.

“Takin’ this out,” he said, while Raihan appeared to be making his way back to his own bedroom, responding with a thumbs-up and a thank-you. He curiously peeked through the opening in the doorway. Certainly was a full-time streamer with all _that_ tech. Anytime Piers was live, it was just him in a closet with his laptop and a b-grade webcam he’d bought secondhand rigged onto it with some creative use of rubber bands. Not that his audience seemed to...mind. He supposed that Raihan’s viewers were of a different kind, and had different expectations from him altogether.

Trash disposed of, Piers leaned his back against the brick wall housing the dumpsters in the car park and lit his cigarette. Honestly, Raihan probably had a lot of valuable information on how to up his streaming game, but he was _far_ from ready to breach _that_ subject with someone. Plus, it was just a hobby—he didn’t need to be jeopardizing relationships to get information he could probably find online himself. It wasn’t like he was making more than a couple bucks each time he went live, anyway.

Raihan would be leaving to get dinner, soon. Piers had managed to get the day off from all of his jobs for his move, and with a guaranteed empty apartment, what better time to test out his new little studio? He had the privilege of some of the fastest internet that the city could provide, might as well put it to use.

He got back upstairs and washed his hands, not keen on rubbing cigarette smoke all over himself. Raihan was probably getting dressed or something, so he gingerly stepped back into his bedroom and started arranging things. It wasn’t very glamorous—he had all his clothes pushed to the far side of the closet, out of view behind where the camera would be, with a black satin sheet lining the floor. He’d tacked the pillowcases from the same set to the wall to make a nice, ambiguous backdrop and threaded some dollar-bin string lights through them in vertical lines for something interesting to look at. His laptop sat on a pillow while he reclined back on a few more.

Piers’s face was never in frame, and he always wore a long-sleeve shirt to conceal any identifying tattoos and piled all of his hair on the top of his head out of view. He supposed it wouldn’t be too terrible if he was somehow discovered by, say, his employers. Bartending—and occasionally dancing—for a gay bar was in a similar line of work to wanking on a gay streaming site anyway. But this wasn’t really work, just something he did for fun, putting himself erotically on display to get his kicks, and help other people get theirs, too.

He sent out a tweet that he’d be going live soon and waited for the telltale sound of jingling keys, Raihan’s heavy footsteps, and the sound of the door locking.

Lately, one of his regulars had been asking to see his abdomen more, so he slipped on a cropped sweater he’d cut up a few weeks ago, sat with his back against the pillow, and eased himself into a comfortable state of arousal with his palm.

* * *

“He’s cool as hell,” Raihan confessed, breaking the egg on his bibimbap with a sigh, now that the photos had been taken. “And he’s,” he flinched, looking up at Sonia’s disapproving brow. “What’s that face?”

“I love you, Raihan, but if you’re about to follow that statement with _he’s hot_ , you’re on a path to self-destruction,” she pointed her chopsticks at him accusingly. “And you know it.”

“I am _not_ ,” he replied defensively. “I can have a hot roommate and control myself, alright? He’s really private, anyway. Didn’t even tell me what he does for a living. Didn’t even wanna sit in the dope sitting room I put together,” he deflated.

“Give him time to get used to it, ‘kay? He literally just moved in _today_ ,” Sonia took a sip of her beer, watching him with concern through her lashes.

“Alright. So maybe I’m being a little weird.”

“Not weird, just very extroverted.”

“Yeah. Whatever. But like, I _really_ wanna get to know him more. He’s so mysterious.”

“Ugh, Raihan,” Sonia would probably be carrying her face in her palm if it weren’t for all the makeup she was wearing. “You’re so hopeless.”

“ _You_ just wanna give me your friend’s number,” he countered, circling in on some seaweed.

“I do! I think you should have sex with someone who gives a shit about _you_ for once! Get it out of your system before you go rebounding with someone you just signed a bloody _lease_ with.”

Getting it out of his system wouldn’t be a terrible idea, but meeting one of Sonia’s YouTube friends only with the intention of having sex seemed...weird to him. Not really his thing. He didn’t mind messing around with people he barely knew, but if this was someone that Sonia was friends with, and even if she had apparently already agreed to it, it was too much pressure to perform well and be a good sport. He figured he’d at least get to know her first.

“Fine, fine. Give her my number. But make sure she knows what she’s getting into,” Raihan resigned.

“She knows. She kind of gets a kick out of being that kind of girl for people, anyway,” Sonia grabbed her phone with a satisfied grin.

“Her name’s Klara, by the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe one of you managed to guess exactly where I was going with this before I could even.. you.. YOU...
> 
> Either way, if it isn't already clear, this fic is going to feature Raihan and maybe also Piers having sex with people who aren't each other, but I'll probably include a ctrl+f term for you to skip to if you're not interested in reading those parts, lol. When it happens.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a part in this chapter where a lesbian has sex with a cis man (Raihan) as a form of self-harm. It's not too graphic, but if it affects you, it may be descriptive enough to be triggering, so to skip it: once you get to "why are you here?" you can Ctrl+F to "That stung," and you'll dodge it entirely.
> 
> Despite the nature of the scene, both parties knew what they were doing and made the choice to do it without being coerced. Heavy stuff aside, enjoy the chapter!

This Klara chick sure was taking her sweet time to get a hold of him.

Maybe not. It had only been a few days, and if she was anything like Sonia, she could be under a blanket in her bedroom well into her fourth day of editing the shit out of a series of pre-recorded videos or something. Sonia had mentioned she was a cosplayer, and that she flew all over the country to attend conventions and stuff, so maybe she was on a plane somewhere and didn’t have time to schedule a booty call right now.

Either way, the idea of meeting up with her seemed kind of scary. He wasn’t sure he was ready for it. In the worst, most humiliating way, he still somehow felt like getting laid wouldn’t be fair to Oleana. His phone said it was Saturday. It had been almost a week since they split. It wasn’t denial. His brain just hadn’t moved on from the two years of being with her, yet.

Yeah, something like that.

He wasn’t feeling great. He hadn’t been. He ended his stream an hour or two early, citing a stomach bug, and he had been so low-energy all stream that people seemed to buy it. Spent some time crying, some more time talking to people in his Discord server about nothing, but currently, he was laying in bed staring at the ceiling.

Even with Piers here, the place felt so quiet. He could hear him coming and going—usually while Raihan himself was working, so he couldn’t peek out and say hi—and he saw him cooking every day. Piers never seemed to eat out if he could avoid it, and his side of the fridge was pretty sparse compared to Raihan’s. A carton of eggs, one or two fresh vegetables at a time, some milk, and a ton of energy drinks. He always had a container of cooked brown rice that he seemed to replenish every few days.

After the first time Piers had offered to cook, he hadn’t again, and Raihan still couldn’t figure out why he got embarrassed and ran away that first night. Otherwise, he was a great roommate. Took out the trash when it was full. Cleaned up after himself. Never left any hair in the shower. Never made any noise. Either he came from a really shitty place before this, or he just wasn’t interested in hanging out with Raihan. It was sad, but he could respect it.

Raihan thought about inviting some of his friends over pretty much every night, but he was worried that Piers was so quiet because he _liked_ the quiet, and he didn’t wanna disturb him. It wasn’t like he could just stop him and ask if it was cool to have people over, but he already barely crossed paths with the guy.

He could text him, if he really wanted, but the last exchange they had was when Piers sent him his email address for the lease, and the longer they went without communicating, the more Raihan felt like maybe it was on purpose.

God, he was twenty-six years old. He needed to get a grip. Sonia wanted him to just fuck it out, then cry it out, and the few people in his streaming circle who knew had said that they were there to talk, but he had nothing to say. Oleana was his girlfriend, and now she wasn’t. End of story.

Except it wasn’t, and he knew that. It was way more complicated and painful than that. This was _their_ life, and she had realized that she couldn’t do it anymore. Because it wasn’t who she was. Because she didn’t care for him the way she had convinced herself she did, and it wasn’t good for her to stay. He got that. They went over it a million times. He didn’t want her to hurt herself by continuing to stay. She didn’t want to hurt him any more than she already had by letting it drag on. Her feelings had been constructed in her head, but his were real, and so remaining in his life would just create a wound that couldn’t heal.

So she went through the apartment with a fine-tooth comb and filed away every piece of herself, packed it up into a series of boxes, and jumped ship. Left her key on the kitchen counter. Took her name off the lease.

A knock at his door shook him out of his doze. He never even _yawned_ before one or two, but his watch said it was just after midnight. He saw her through the peephole on the other side of the door, with a box in her arms. Raihan felt like he was chained in place there, two warring sides of himself creating friction and sparks from how they clashed. He didn’t have to open it. He could tell her to leave it and go, or pretend he wasn’t home.

But she looked upset, and she wasn’t usually still wearing her lipstick this late at night. She’d obviously gone out of her way to see him. It would be rude not to hear her out. The dead bolt ground against the lock—one final bit of resistance from the other side—and he swung the door open.

“Hey.”

“These are yours.”

She had clearly been crying. She had a whole routine she would go through when it happened—getting something cold like a spoon under her eyes to prevent swelling, removing or re-touching any makeup that had been disturbed in the process—but he knew her well enough to see through it. The tip of her nose was pink, her eyes were glossy, and her voice had a break to it that wasn’t usually there. He held out his hand for the box and fished through it.

“These are all things I bought for you,” Raihan furrowed his brow. “You can keep this stuff, I don’t—“

“You paid for them. Keep it.” There was a bite to her words, like she was convincing herself.

“Oleana, I don’t want this stuff,” Raihan picked up the handbag he’d gotten her for her birthday last year and looked it over. The bottle of perfume that was half-empty. Every card he’d ever written her was in here, too. “What am I gonna do with this? It’s just gonna remind me of you.”

She looked frustrated, like she often did when she’d worked out a whole plan in her head and it didn’t pan out. Raihan wasn’t particularly keen on having this conversation in the hallway, so he stepped aside.

“Come on in.”

* * *

“You’ve redecorated.”

“Kind of had to,” Raihan said with little spite, just stating a fact. “Place looked sad without all the stuff that used to be here.”

They both stood there, staring at each other. Raihan set the box of returned gifts down. He didn’t like the way it felt in his arms.

“Oleana,” his voice wavered, “why are you here?”

She’d been looking down, but her head snapped up to look at him, and she was charging forward, taking her face between her hands to kiss him tearfully. Raihan stumbled backward, but she caught him and held him in place. The only person who had ever had the strength to do that. He knew it was wrong, but she was in his arms after he thought he’d never feel it again, and he ran his fingers up through her long, blonde hair, cherishing her. Feeling her tears on his cheek.

“What are you—”

“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I’m sorry. I hate this. I just want to be with you.” With her fists balled up around his shirt, she embraced him, and his knees started to buckle.

They went to their bedroom. Both of them cried the whole time. Raihan couldn’t even fathom trying to relax enough to come, but he would do anything to be with her one more time, no matter how regressive and wrong he knew it was. She was stoic and weepy on top of him for most of it, and he, honestly, could barely stay hard enough to make it work, but she _wanted_ him, for the first time in a long time, and he was powerless to deny her that.

When it was over, he held her and she wiped her face on the back of her arm, with whatever remained of her lipstick smearing into a bloody-looking mark that reached from back-of-hand, to wrist, and toward elbow. They stared at each other in horror for a moment, and then Oleana sat upright and started gathering her clothes. Throwing them on in a frenzy.

“This was a mistake.”

That stung, but he couldn’t find the words to convince her that it wasn’t. He knew it was. Pulling some sweatpants on, Raihan followed her back to the sitting room.

“We could try to be friends,” he blurted out, wincing at the raw naïveté of his own words. Sounded so stupid out loud.

“This is precisely why we can’t,” Oleana managed, backed out the door, and left.

What an exit.

* * *

Piers wasn’t supposed to work tonight, but they needed another dancer for some DJ’s set, he was free, and could use an extra hundred bucks, so he’d slipped on some fishnets and headed to the bar. It was nice to be off by one instead of the usual two or three.

The music was still ringing in his ears in the elevator—a feeling he’d weirdly come to like; coming down from the high of being on stage or even just the energy from the club. He’d unlaced his big, chunky platforms and pulled them off by the time he made it to his floor. Nothing like cold tile to rest weary feet after a shift. He turned the corner down the hallway just in time to watch a really distraught looking woman with her hand over her face, clearly crying, burst through his front door and shoulder-check him on her way to punch the buttons next to the elevators. That’s Hollywood, baby.

Still, if she was crying that hard and coming from _his_ apartment…

God, fuck. Raihan was up. Which meant he was going to see him all dressed up in his go-go outfit in the wake of the catastrophic fight or hookup-gone-wrong or whatever the hell that woman and him had been up to. He had a big jacket and some sweatpants on top of it, but his hair was still full of glitter and he still had fishnets going up to his ribs underneath some dukes that were basically a speedo. Great. He was about to waltz into this intimate and personal moment dressed like an asshole. Piers took a breath so deep he almost launched into a fit of smoker-coughing, grit his teeth, and opened the door. Damn, he hadn’t even bothered to lock it behind her.

Raihan was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, shirtless, and, to Piers’s chagrin but not surprise, looking very upset. The cheerful guy he’d been avoiding, with those relaxed eyes of his, was missing; replaced with the unmistakable, crumpled posture of someone who’d just had their heart broken. He saw it every day at the bar, but knew it well in his own life, too.

Well, time to make his big entrance.

“Evenin’,” he said uncomfortably, hanging his key up on the hook and locking the door behind him. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about it? There was no reason for Piers to stick around. He really needed a shower, and he was starving, but Raihan looked up at him with horror—like he was mortified, predictably so—and then probably shocked, because of the amount of glitter and makeup smeared on his face and teased into his hair, and then...huh. Piers couldn’t really read that last look. Didn’t really want to.

“Hey,” Raihan had his hand over his mouth like he was wiping something away. Piers thought about the woman with the red lipstick all over her arm that he’d run into outside. There were logical conclusions to be drawn there, but Piers made the effort not to. At least out loud. “You uh, just get off work?”

Well, that was a polite way to put it.

“Had a gig in West Hollywood, yeah,” Piers said vaguely. The cat was out of the bag, so he shouldered off his coat and folded it over his arm. Raihan had plenty of seconds of silence to use to excuse himself and didn’t take any of them, and graciously didn’t mention anything about Piers’s bizarre getup either. He figured just leaving him he might be the best option, but he was curious, and Raihan looked like he needed an ear, so he shifted his weight and scratched his head.

“Hungry?”

“Huh?”

“Are ya hungry, la?” he braved. “I know it’s late, but I’m cravin’ pancakes. Be pretty easy to whip sum’n up for ya.”

The grateful smile that Raihan graced him with could have knocked him clean on his ass, if he wasn’t careful.

“You know, now that I think about it, I’m fucking _starving_ ,” Raihan laughed, rubbing his forehead. “Missed dinner entirely. I might take you up on that. But I need a joint first. Welcome to join me for that, if you’d like.”

Huh. Piers hadn’t smelled anything in the house since he’d been here, but maybe Raihan was sneaking away to the dumpster just like he was.

Smoking weed was something he’d take part in when friends offered it to him, but it was a little too expensive to fit in as a regular habit. Raihan was, again, probably just offering it to be polite, but the man looked like he would break if he heard the word “no,” so Piers gave him a shrug.

“Sure,” he reached up to unfasten the band in his hair, letting it fall over his back. It had been up tight for a long time and the feeling of letting his scalp relax always hurt, but in a satisfying way, that made his nose wrinkle. “Mind‘f I change first?”

“Not at all, I’m gonna go roll one up.”

“Good deal.”

* * *

He didn’t bother trying to wrestle with a hairbrush or scrub off any of his makeup. Those were battles to be fought in the morning. Plus, he didn’t want to keep Raihan waiting too long, so he threw off all his work clothes and poked his head through that same cropped sweater that was still sitting on his mattress and a pair of shorts. It would probably be chilly outside with so little clothing on, but the fishnets had been digging into his abdomen all night, and he never liked having stuff touch his stomach, anyway. He ended up shoving a beanie on his head just to keep his hair somewhat contained before heading back out.

To his surprise, Raihan was waiting on the balcony in one of two plastic chairs, with a rickety little table and an ashtray between them. He’d taken his locs out of the loose knot at the top of his head they were usually in, framing his face in a flattering way. He had a joint between his thumb and forefinger held out to him. Piers sat down and accepted it between index and middle.

“You smoke?” Raihan asked, which seemed like a silly question considering he’d already agreed—oh, cigarettes. Because he was grabbing the joint like the veteran chain smoker he was.

“Not up here, but yeah. Bad habit,” he replied modestly, drawing the smoke into his lungs. It was strong—stronger than the dieselly, mostly-dry stuff he usually bummed off of friends. He already knew Raihan could afford to live in the hills, he wasn’t sure why he was so surprised that he was picking up his bud from fancy dispensaries instead of out of dime bags from friends of friends with hydroponics in their studio apartments. Piers exhaled, letting the smoke dissipate into the air over the flickering cityscape.

“You can use the balcony. Everyone‘s got their own thing,” Raihan mused. “My ex hated that I smoked weed, but she drank like a bloody sailor whenever we went out, so…” Speaking of which.

“Ran into quite the character in the hallway,” Piers treaded carefully. If he didn’t want to talk about it, he wouldn’t bite.

“Yeah, I figured. Timing was too tight for you to not have seen her,” Raihan leaned back, taking a long drag and passing it back to him. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”

“It was nothin’, didn’t really get a good look at ‘er anyway.” Inhale, sharp breath into the chest, exhale.

Piers stole a glance in his direction and saw Raihan with his eyes closed, breathing meditatively. He flicked some ash into the tray between them, waiting for Raihan to speak again.

“Well, you won’t be seeing her again.”

Now really wasn’t the time for Piers to notice how cute and appealing Raihan was. He tended to wear baggy shirts, so this was the first time he’d gotten an inkling of what his body looked like, despite how tonally inappropriate it was to be checking him out. The diffused light of the nearby buildings didn’t help. The weed also didn’t help. Piers swallowed any further thoughts he may have had about it.

“Sorry again, damn. Didn’t even make it a week without unloading on you,” Raihan chuckled self consciously, sitting up to finish the last of his joint and put out the cherry in the tray. “Been a while since I’ve gone through something like this. Anyway, how was work?”

“I don’t mind it, yano. If you’re wantin’ to get some’a your thoughts out, I _am_ a bartender, most’a the time, so ‘m pretty used to it.” He rolled his hands on his thighs and leaned back in his chair. “Work’s fine. Tips’re better on stage’n at the bar, so.” His stomach growled comically loud, and they both stared at each other for a moment before bursting into a fit of laughter. It felt good, even for Piers, to be able to release some tension like that, and his head was feeling pleasantly buzzy after smoking, the soreness in his muscles melting away.

Raihan wheezed, doubled over, looked at him again and smiled at him, disarming and charismatic and grateful and warm.

“Pancakes?”

“Hell yeah.”

* * *

Piers had asked for space in the kitchen, claiming that he didn’t work well with others helping, and Raihan wasn’t about to turn down free food, so he straddled the back of a dining room chair and watched him work instead.

“Are we doin’ home-style pancakes, or the ones they serve in the states?” Piers asked, cracking eggs into a bowl.

“Honestly, English pancakes are boring. Thicker the better, if it’s up to me,” he replied lazily, resting his head on his folded arms on the back of the chair.

“Agreed,” Piers dumped some of his rice into the batter and whisked it around. He must have noticed Raihan’s upturned brow, because he followed it with, “for some substance. Stomach’ll be growlin’ in an hour otherwise.”

Worked for him.

Usually, Raihan’s phone would be burning a hole in his pocket by now, but the idea of parsing any of his media feeds exhausted him, and it was just as entertaining to watch Piers work. He hadn’t gotten to see much of his cooking or what any of the end results ever looked like, but he could already tell that he was in for a treat.

Dinner-breakfast was served, and they decided to head back to the balcony to watch the helicopters circle around. Piers handed him a plate that looked, frankly, beautiful. A stack of hotcakes four high, with picturesque maple syrup dripping down the sides and a square of butter on top that was _just_ beginning to melt. He couldn’t wait to dig in.

It was probably mostly the day he’d had and his inebriated state, but Raihan took his first bite and came to realize it had been months since he’d had a real, honest-to-God home-cooked meal. He reeled back in his chair so suddenly that Piers jumped.

“ _Bloo_ — _dy_ hell, man!” Raihan grinned with a mouth full. “This is _amazing_.”

“Fuck, you nearly made me think I’d _poisoned_ you or somethin’. Settle down, now, la.” Piers delicately cut into his own stack and took a small bite, nodded, and continued with a little more confidence. “Not bad.”

“Not in the slightest,” Raihan agreed. “Thanks, mate. Really needed this.”

Piers seemed to curl in on himself, and in the lighting he couldn’t _really_ tell, but his body language looked a little shy. Raihan liked to imagine that he was blushing, which was beyond cute, but more than anything, he was just pleased to be in his company right now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of angst last time, so this time it's a little lighter and a little shorter. Also eek bumped the rating again!!

Some time ago, perhaps even as far back as secondary school, when Piers had begun experimenting with makeup, he’d discovered his most cherished, tried-and-true cosmetic item: olive oil. Even the driest, cakiest waterproof mascara couldn’t hold a candle to some olive oil on a cotton round, and at some point, as his looks for work got more elaborate and dramatic, he’d just started massaging it in with his hands to melt away the layers. Worked like a charm every time, and it was so gentle that it never stung in his eyes. It would make his vision a little blurry if he didn’t follow it with some kind of soap, but that was easy and cheap to do.

He rinsed away the glittery black puddle of oil and makeup in the bottom of the sink and got to work on his hair. Most of it would be easier to manage once it was wet, but the initial tangles at the end were best dealt with dry to prevent breaking. Split ends were his number-one pet peeve; he was known for trimming them off whenever he was stuck in traffic, no matter how much his bandmates screamed at him to keep his eye on the road.

Once he was pleased, he turned on the water as hot as it would go and stepped into the steam. Last night’s chance encounter played in his mind again. The crying woman, Raihan, looking like he was about to break down on the couch, how he relaxed and sat quietly on the balcony, losing his mind over something as simple as a stack of pancakes. Piers had a bad habit of developing soft spots for people who were hurting, or just needed a hot meal, and it didn’t help that Raihan had an air of charisma that he couldn’t see past.

After Raihan had dozed off in his chair last night, Piers took care of the dishes as quietly as he could, intending to just walk off to his room and head to bed. He didn’t feel good about leaving him out there to wake up alone, especially outside, and ended up shaking his shoulder to rouse him. Raihan never woke up all the way; just enough to lean on Piers while he dragged him into his bedroom. For someone who boasted about their late schedule on multiple occasions, he sure did seem exhausted.

_“You look so cute in that little crop top, man,” Raihan mumbled half-coherently, rolling over to bury his face in the pillows on his bed. “Half a mind to pull you down here with me.”_

_“Don’t think that’s in your best interest, mate.”_

His feet had felt heavier with every step out of the room, but Raihan’s breathing had evened out immediately after that exchange, and he was able to control himself knowing it was just a sleepy musing, nothing more. Probably didn’t even remember saying it.

He did _not_ need to be running this through his head right now. Piers cranked the temperature gauge all the way to the right, letting the cold water shock him out of a thought that didn’t serve him and make him shiver until he could focus on anything else, and the tension between his legs had relaxed.

* * *

Piers had been in his room all day, which came as no surprise to Raihan, considering they’d both been up until three in the morning getting baked and eating sweets. It wasn’t _unlikely_ that he’d still be in bed until the afternoon, like Raihan had been, but it was almost five now and the only indication he’d gotten that Piers was even home was the fact that the shower was running.

He wanted to thank him. He normally wasn’t great at asking for help, and he wouldn’t have been able to get that kind of empathy from any of his online friends—especially at that hour—without contacting them first. Raihan knew he probably wouldn’t have done that, even if he knew he’d happily do it for any of them.

Piers didn’t ask him any probing questions or try to make him talk about it any more than he did by accident—nor did he give him any unwanted advice. It was everything he needed, and more, and all he wanted to do was talk to him for a little longer. Show him he was grateful. Raihan paced around his kitchen until he heard the door to the bathroom open.

“Piers! Hey,” he called, making his way over to the hallway.

“...Yeah?”

“I was gonna order food, I was wondering if y—”

Piers stood there staring at him, gripping the towel around his waist in a fist, with a bundle of clothes under his arm and wet hair dripping all over his shoulders.

“—If you wanted—”

Raihan made every attempt to keep his eyes locked with Piers’s, but his wiry shoulders were pulling him down further, and he saw a hint of something metal on his chest.

“Uh, if you wanted anything,” he finished, losing focus. Piers was reedy and thin-set, but he had some tone in his arms and chest that gave him structure. The angle of his waist was enticingly weighed on one side from the way he was standing, with a very modest patch of trimmed dark hair leading his eyes down from the navel.

“‘M alright,” was Piers’s stiff reply, color pooling in his chest and climbing up his neck, eyes directly on Raihan and nowhere else. “Be on m’way out to meet with the band soon.”

“Oh? You’re in a band?” Raihan interjected curiously. Everyone and their dad was in a band in this city, but he was still interested, because he was still eager to hear anything he could about Piers.

“Yeah,” he breathed, sounding distracted. Oh. Right.

Raihan whipped around, making a beeline out of the hallway into his bedroom to his desk, calling behind him, “Well, I owe you for last night, so I’ll leave it in the fridge for you! I’ll be streaming soon, uh, sojusttextmeifyouthinkofanything—bye!”

He heard Piers shuffle into his room and closed the door before he took another breath.

* * *

The fuck was that?

Piers backed himself against the inside of his bedroom door, short of breath, growing more frustrated and aroused as the image of Raihan’s eyes meeting his—then flicking down and back up—swirled around in his mind. He could have sworn the guy tucked a corner of his lip behind his teeth, and even if he didn’t, he _should_ have been, with the way he was looking at him like he wanted to devour him.

 _Un-fucking-believable,_ he thought to himself, reaching delicately and desperately down to palm his body’s interest away over the towel. When that proved ineffective, he figured he’d just gotten a little overexcited, and taking care of this would be better than simmering in arousal and being jumpy at his rehearsal for the next few hours. Admitting defeat, he threw off his towel and let his head dip back.

No, if he wanted to do this fast—and quietly—he was going to need to try harder than that.

He shoved his face into his pillow, doubled over with his knees on his mattress. He tried to think about _anything_ but Raihan, which proved to be pointless, so he made the deal with himself that he could do it just this _once_ , not hold back, get it out of his system, and move on. He was practically punching himself in the stomach in the fervor with which he touched himself, thinking about that little overbite that Raihan had, and how he bit the tip of his tongue with his white, perfect teeth when he smiled. Piers wanted those teeth to graze the insides of his thighs, where he could grasp that flashy haircut by the root and press himself into his mouth.

Still not enough. He felt around for a discarded bottle of lube in his sheets and wet his fingers, reaching around to tease himself inside, thinking about the delicate way Raihan held that joint out to him, with soft hands that seemed to go on for miles. Piers knew that those fingers could find their way inside of him—rubbing what he himself could barely reach at this angle, but he remembered the feeling of Raihan leaning on him, aware of what that weight would feel like up against him, and it was over.

Piers rocked his hips back with a short groan and his back dipped forward, tense and then slack and hazy. He rolled over onto his back and pulled up his camera. He figured his little following could use a freebie treat, and he was in the mood, so he took a quick video to show off his mess, typed up a saucy caption, double-checked it, and sent it out into the world.

_poisonsweetie shared a Tweet with you._

God, already? She was always on his case when he was online. Piers found his discarded towel and cleaned himself the rest of the way before reading.

_poisonsweetie: waaoowww someone’s not getting ready for rehearsal like they said they would!_

_spikem0uthx: naff off_

_poisonsweetie: awww lol awee you embawassed piews??_

_spikem0uthx: kiss mine lol_

_poisonsweetie: :,,( fr tho babe this looks good as hell. you SURE for SURE you don’t want me to promo you a lil bit?? your following would blow up_

_spikem0uthx: see you at rehearsal. dont be late_

_poisonsweetie: you know i will be ♥_


	5. Chapter 5

The box sat there for a week.

Piers hadn’t dared to spare it more than a brief glance as he came and went, but he spared it every time. Raihan was fairly tidy and didn’t usually leave things out—in fact, when he got _new_ things, he usually made a point of showing them to Piers in some form, either with a picture via text or by catching him in the rare time he wasn’t in his bedroom or on his way to work. But Raihan hadn’t said a word about the box that had been on the coffee table ever since his ex stormed out of the apartment and crashed into Piers. He figured that he hadn’t mentioned it because they were connected, and that there were painful memories tied to the contents of it, and he hadn’t expected Raihan to ever bring it up. He just thought that one day, it wouldn’t be there when he got home from work.

When he made it back to the apartment from an early shift, Piers wasn’t surprised to see Raihan in his usual spot on the balcony. He’d since learned that he liked to smoke to wind down from the high-energy persona he had online, none of which Piers had mustered the courage to find or watch, and usually Piers would just offer him a nod on his way to pass out on his bed. But this time, Raihan sat up and came inside with intention in his expression, intercepting Piers’s attempt to skitter away to his bedroom.

“Hey, can I ask you for a favor?” Raihan asked.

“Uh, sure?”

“Sorry, sorry. I mean,” he rubbed the back of his neck, kneading down into his shoulders before letting his hand slip away. “That was rude. How was work?”

“Busy, manageable. Don’t worry ‘bout it, ‘s fine. Ask away.” Piers encouraged politely. If Raihan needed something and it was within his power to help him, he might as well give it a shot.

“That’s good,” Raihan shoved his hands in his pockets. “That’s good. This is really awkward, but,” his head dropped to eye the box on the table between them. Piers’s pace quickened. Raihan tapped it with his foot.

“I was wondering if you’d get rid of this for me? You can keep anything you want that you find in there, and uh, well, it’s all stuff from my ex, and every time I look at it, I,” he paused, self-correcting, and swallowed, “I’m sick of looking at it. But there’s some nice stuff in there that could use a new home.”

Piers walked cautiously toward the table and bent to inspect its contents for the first time. These things were all definitely returned gifts. A designer wallet, an ornate bottle of perfume, and a pair of stiletto heels that probably cost more than Piers paid for a month’s worth of groceries, to name a few things. It looked like there could even be jewelry in here, too, judging from the two velvet boxes that he could see. Looks like whoever Raihan had been with, she either had a taste for elegance and luxury, or Raihan was just a very generous lover. But Raihan was watching him with vulnerability just like before, and Piers couldn’t pick his head back up to face him without agreeing.

“No problem. I’ll just toss or donate anythin’ I don’t need, tha’lright?” he said carefully. Raihan put his hands up and shrugged.

“Honestly, mate, you could chuck it all in the bin and I wouldn’t mind. Just don’t wanna see it anymore.”

Piers gathered the box in his arms and nodded to him.

“Sure,” he averted his eyes to miss the way the tension melted off of Raihan’s shoulders. “‘M off to bed, then.”

“Thanks, Piers. I owe you. Goodnight.”

 _Goodnight._ That was something of a surprise, hearing Raihan dismiss him so personally. Maybe it wasn’t that personal, actually? Did people their age still wish each other a good night?

Either way, he grunted at him in response and made his way back to his room. His new bed frame was still in the box, waiting to be built, but he hadn’t found the time nor the energy to do so yet. He was pretty sure he was off tomorrow, maybe he could do it then.

For now, he sat cross-legged on his mattress and took an indulgent look inside the box that had been haunting him all week.

The wallet could go to Marnie, and if she didn’t want it, he could pawn it or sell it somewhere. The shoes were size 10, likely too big for Nessa but might fit one of his other friends. He took pictures of them so he could ask around tomorrow at a more reasonable hour. The perfume would probably just go to whoever wanted it, too. It smelled nice, but Piers couldn’t imagine that Raihan would want his ex girlfriend’s signature scent wafting off of him every time they crossed paths.

The jewelry...he might have to ask Nessa to take over this one. He didn’t know anything about stones, and the last time he tried to sell something half as nice as this, the clerk looked at him like he’d stolen it. Plus, the bracelet was engraved with a monogram, so it wasn’t likely he’d be able to find someone who wanted it and wasn’t just going to melt it down. He wished he was close enough with Raihan to check to see if that was alright. The guy said he wasn’t worried about it ending up in the dumpster outside, but it seemed like a waste. It was pretty and delicate and probably cost a fortune—way more than Piers expected even _Raihan_ to be able to afford. Maybe he saved up for it?

He had everything laid out and organized in piles based on where they would go. Back to Liverpool for Marnie, to his friends, and to be sold somewhere. At the bottom of the box there was a neat stack of greeting cards in varying colors, each addressed to an Oleana on the outside.

_Sweetheart,_

_It’s been almost a year since we got together! Whatcha think of that? Personally, I’ve never enjoyed spending time with anyone the way I do with you—_

Piers snapped the card shut. He shouldn’t be reading this, it was an egregious invasion of privacy. Raihan didn’t entrust him with disposing of all of this just to snoop through things that were never meant for his eyes.

Still, no one could see him here, and there were so many cards… Maybe one of them had a gift card tucked into a sleeve or something? He had to be thorough and check them all, right? Otherwise it’d be a waste.

_Happy Hanukkah, my love. This past year was even better than the one prior. I’m so proud of everything you’ve accomplished this year, and I’m so grateful to have been by your side throughout—_

No card there. Moving on. Piers’s hands trembled with adrenaline and shame, but he kept going.

_My Valentine,_

_Hey, you sexy thing—_

None here either! Next one, next one…

_Hey, birthday girl!_

_I know the last couple of weeks have been rough, but even when I’m not with you, I want you to remember that I’m always on your side._

Okay, there was no reason for him to keep going, but this one was really long, and dated only a few months ago. Curiosity got the best of him and Piers continued to scan it, under the false pretense that if we only _skimmed_ it, it wouldn’t be such a perverse betrayal of privacy.

_I love you. I miss you. And when you get back in town, I’ll rub your shoulders just like I used to._

Piers sighed and set the stack down. It was no fun to read these knowing how things ended. He didn’t know the details, but it was clearly painful and explosive, and seeing the way Raihan could love her—so open, so supportive, and so honest—was tugging at his heartstrings in a way he long thought he’d been immune to.

Based on what he read and the gifts piled around his mattress, to be Raihan’s lover was to be supported. To be held up for your achievements and celebrated. To be cherished. Piers reached for the card again and let his fingers trace down the lines of Raihan’s oddly mathematical, expressive penmanship and thought about what it’d be like to hear these words.

_I’ve never enjoyed spending time with anyone the way I do with you._

_I’m so proud of everything you’ve accomplished this year._

_I’m always on your side._

Piers felt a little pathetic for longing to hear those things. He’d always been unlucky in love, drawing in people that fed on his insecurities to boost themselves up, or people trying to make projects out of him and setting him up with a “real job,” or whatever else they deemed would be better than the life he enjoyed living. To be loved the way Raihan loved sounded like a vast departure from the kind he’d grown accustomed to and resigned himself to believing he deserved. It gave him a fluttering hope in his chest that there would be a Raihan out there for him, someday.

Piers slipped each card back into his envelope and set them back in the box. It was inexcusably creepy to keep them for himself, but even if the words weren’t for him, it would be nice to pull them out and read them, occasionally. He wasn’t committed to the idea, but he was leaning in that direction. Maybe he’d come up with a reason to throw them away tomorrow.

With everything organized on his vanity, Piers laid back on his bed and ran his fingers through his hair. The alarm clock on the floor next to the mattress said it was barely eleven. Much too early to go to bed.

Piers eyed the shoebox he’d left open that lived in his makeshift streaming station. It had been a while since he’d played with anything fun off-stream, and he figured some personal time could push him out of the oddly voyeuristic and emotionally confusing thoughts he was having about Raihan.

* * *

“He go to bed?” Raihan’s guest asked softly, wrapping her arms around a spare pillow on his bed when he reentered the room.

“I think so. Once he goes into his room, he’s usually in there for the night,” he replied, watching with mild interest when she rolled over onto her stomach. “Sorry I had to stash you in here. I can pack you another bowl if you’d like.”

Looked like she had removed her shorts while he was gone. He didn’t mind, but he didn’t want to go much further than that.

“No, I’m fine. I feel good,” Klara swept her palm over the sheets, flirtatiously inviting him in. “Come lay with me.”

Last week, she’d sent him a message saying she had just returned from a convention in Boston and would need a few days to become human again before she was ready to be social. Raihan had replied that he didn’t know exactly what Sonia had told her, but he wasn’t ready for casual sex with a stranger, to which Klara proposed they just hang out and see where it goes, no pressure to do anything more than enjoy each other’s company.

It was nice to have someone flirt with him. Klara wasn’t shy about touching his arm or complimenting his figure, laughing at his jokes or making prolonged eye contact, all while keeping within his boundaries. She seemed to know exactly what he didn’t want her to do, because she never overstepped, and they’d been having a nice time smoking and playing video games before Piers got home.

Raihan slotted in next to her and she laid her head on his chest.

“I know you don’t want to fuck tonight, which is fine by me,” she began, “but how would you feel about making out a little bit? You’re really cute.”

“Uh,” he considered, eyeing the way her curls fell over his chest. Her makeup was pretty, and it felt good to have the weight on him again. She knew exactly what kind of situation he was in and she was willing to go along with it, what could it hurt to try? Raihan trusted that they could stop if it wasn’t working out.

“I guess, sure.”

“You don’t sound very sure.”

“No, I just—sorry, I don’t know what I’m so worried about. Kissing’s fine. Anything more than that...uh, not tonight.”

“No problem,” Klara lifted herself up enough to creep up his chest and press their lips together. Hers tasted like the sour candies she’d been eating, which had long since been lost in his sheets somewhere. She felt foreign and strange, but not unwelcome; not warm nor comforting like he’d expected. It was more like she was indulging herself in him than she was expressing any kind of affection, but he supposed that was just the nature of the arrangement they made. He let his hands and his mind wander up and down her back.

* * *

Piers didn’t even see her sitting there until he closed the fridge and jumped out of his skin.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he held his chest, watching Klara stir and take a sip of something from one of Raihan’s mugs. From what Piers could see, she was in her underwear, and she had slipped on one of Raihan’s oversized t-shirts, so there was no questioning _what_ she was doing here, or why, but she was clearly waiting for him to ask anyway. “Do I wanna know?”

“I dunno, do you?” she shot back, curling her fingers around her cup and clicking her acrylics against the ceramic glaze. “You’re a smart boy. I wager you can guess.”

He was well aware of Klara’s taste for people who were hurting, because she never shut up about the new mark she had, and had no issues detailing the nasty, intimate details of their heartbreak with the rest of the band. Still, it was a cruel coincidence that she’d found _Raihan_ in her crosshairs, and that he’d probably been masturbating in the other bloody room thinking about him again while she got on with him. He didn’t want to think about that, and she would tease him until the end of time if she ever found out.

“There’s hot water in the kettle, if you’d like to join me,” she invited, “I borrowed some of your oolong.”

“‘Course you did,” he shook his head, but brewed himself something anyway. “I’ll never meet someone else who gets as comfortable in a stranger’s home’n you, Klara.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she grinned, “but it’s not a stranger’s place if _you_ live here, yeah? I knew you moved to Hollywood, but I never expected you to be somewhere so _posh_. Your little side business must be paying off, love! Proud of you.”

Klara had, naturally, been absent when he needed to move. She’d been in Boston at the time, but even if she hadn’t, Piers wouldn’t put it past her to make up an excuse to not help. Might damage her nails or something.

He paid no mind to the comment about his streams. She was the only other person he knew who did anything close to that, with her subscription service or whatever the hell else she was doing now, and had set him up on his hosting site a few months ago. Her help was welcome at the time, but now she just liked to mention it whenever they were alone because she liked being in on the secret.

“Don’t you wanna know how it was?” Klara pressed further, not pleased with him drinking at the table with her in silence.

“Not particularly, no.”

“Well,” she continued anyway. “We didn’t do anything. We just kissed for a few minutes and he fell asleep. I don’t really think he’s the hooking-up type,” she lamented, tapping her finger on the corner of her mouth thoughtfully. “That, or he’s just still super torn about his ex girlfriend. If he feels like it, I’ll give him another shot some other time.”

Piers had a million questions on his tongue that he forced himself to swallow. What did it feel like? Did he talk about her? Did he talk about _him?_ How was he doing? These were all things he wanted to know, and could never ask Raihan himself, but to ask Klara and betray his feigned disinterest would be a fate worse than death. She’d lord this crush over him until he lost his mind.

“What’s that face? You jealous? He _is_ really cute. God, and so tall. And his hands are so—”

Piers set his cup down.

“I’m off,” he said abruptly, straightening and taking his tea with the tips of his fingers around the rim of the mug.

“Oh, you _like_ him,” Klara lilted, sounding pleased with herself for deducing an obvious fact. “That’s dangerous, babe. He is _ripe_ for that rebound.”

“If you’re still here in the mornin’, I’ll take ya home,” Piers didn’t turn back around to face her and closed his door.

She was right, he did need to be careful. He took the cards out of the box and tossed them in his bin, hit the mattress hard, and fell asleep with a mug of oolong getting cold on the floor next to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really blown away by all the kind things people have said about this so far! This was originally intended to be an easy break from navigating where I didn't have to focus on so many POVs, but then the plot kind of grabbed hold of me and took it in a different direction. I've heard a lot of people say that some of the darker parts of this resonate with them and with people they love, and hearing that kind of thing seriously puts the wind under my wings because...well, that's exactly why I'm writing it. Thank you so much!! I'm so pleased to see you guys enjoying my work.
> 
> If you're interested in keeping up with me or what I'm up to, you can check me out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/tastybabie), although the stuff I post there is considerably less, uh, emotionally substantial than what I say here on AO3 LOL


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter again.  
> Get ready for some songfic, lol. If you're curious, the first set of lyrics is from [New Slang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYwCmcB0XMw) (I feel like everyone knows this song but it's worth linking anyway), and the second one is [Talking in Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fWlJbqgz7g). They're not necessarily required for reading the chapter but it might give you a liiiiittle more context than just reading the lyrics on their own, if you're into that.

It was just one of those nights that sleep wouldn’t come.

Piers had scrubbed himself down from work around three—no dancing this time, just the usual grey and boozy grime that came from working the bar—and crawled onto his mattress by four. His mind was buzzing with static he couldn’t parse and the soreness in his muscles begged for rest but wouldn’t accept it. As frustrating as it was, it wasn’t the end of the world. He worked late again tomorrow, and the band wasn’t even meeting until five or six. He could go to bed at eight, get a few hours, and be fine by then with a cocktail of Red Bull and black coffee, which had been his drink of choice lately anyway.

Still, the mattress wasn’t doing its job of swallowing him like it was supposed to, and in an hour the sun would be up, so he figured he might as well give up for now. Smoke a cigarette. Get some fresh air. Piers slipped on a loose tank top, a piece of merch that he’d likely swapped with another band at some show a long time ago. On a whim, he grabbed his old acoustic from behind the bed frame that he still hadn’t assembled.

It had been, what, at least three weeks since he bought it?

Finding time to do anything other than his routine of sleeping, eating, working, playing music, and occasionally meeting with his band wasn’t too high on his list of priorities, even if he knew his back would be grateful in the long run. He didn’t really want to have his friends over again, _especially_ if Klara was still messing around with Raihan. He hadn’t seen her, but Raihan had been coming home late from somewhere every once and a while… It wasn’t his business though. Piers never cared about any of Klara’s previous sexploits, and wasn’t terribly interested in starting now. Still, she usually talked his ear off about it regardless of whether or not he was open to hearing it, so the fact that she was so quiet about it was very out of character for her.

Whatever. He didn’t even know if they were still hanging out. Raihan didn’t seem to be her type, anyway. Piers shoved the pack of cigarettes on his vanity in his pocket, held his guitar by the neck and made his way to the balcony. His phone said it was just past five-thirty in the morning.

By the time he pushed the butt into the ashtray, he’d gotten an old Shins song stuck in his head. He was pretty sure he still knew how to play it, so he balanced his guitar on his knee and started strumming.

It was a muscle memory thing, from all the years he played it in his childhood bedroom, turning up the headphones so he could hear the music while he wore them around his neck, watching his fingers in the mirror. He could see that unmade twin-size mattress looking back at him in his reflection, the posters straining against years-old tape and thumbtacks on the walls, and the clothes strewn all over the floor. Marnie would always sing the opening vocals, but she wasn’t here, so he filled them in for her with a hum, and then it was his turn.

_Gold teeth and a curse for this town_

_Were all in my mouth_

_Only, I don't know how they got out, dear_

_Turn me back into the pet_

_I was when we met_

_I was happier then with no mindset_

At some point, he went from mumbling under his breath to singing them outright, drinking in the nostalgia and the textures from home, from a simpler time, when everything was still wonderful and lovely. It hugged him with its warmth protecting him from the morning chill and he thanked it by breathing further life into it, carrying himself away on practiced words, long remembered. By the end he was rocking back and forth, keeping time with his knee with his eyes closed.

Piers sat back, but his thumb and forefinger kept picking away. It started as something new, but his hands ended up wrapping around an old song, one that he hadn’t even meant to write, had Klara not found it in an old notebook while looking for something else. He thumbed out the rest of the first few bars, and in his head he could hear Nessa’s guitar and Milo accompanying him on drums, so he kept going, until Milo’s cue gave way and he took a breath.

_I gotta go, and you're talking in code_

_Sayin’ I know where you've been and I know where you go_

It had started as a poem, deep in the archives of his bookcase. He’d scribbled it down after something had reminded him of an ex. Nobody was meant to see it, and he never expected it to be a song, so it was much more sensitive than anything they’d written at the time. He played with point-of-view between himself and the second person in the space, kept things blurry, and left hints. That had always been his style, but it had never been so candid.

_But I've been tired from the minute I woke_

_I stopped listening the moment you spoke_

_And said I'm long gone_

_Yeah, I'm long gone_

He remembered that feeling of distrust that followed him everywhere he went, hovering over him with the guilt of even _needing_ to feel it. He knew what was going on, and he just waited for it to stop one day. It didn’t, and then everything fell apart, and he was still the one feeling torn up about it. Piers took a breath and let his voice crack over the sharpest knife in the song, something he’d lost his composure over the first few times he’d sung it for the rest of them.

_And I'm sleeping alone_

_In a house I don't own_

_'Cause if you're touring your mind_

_You'll get lost every time_

Nessa had suggested the use of horns, knowing it meant she would have to drag her old case out of the deepest corner of her closet, but they all liked the way they sounded so much, they ended up using them in two more songs on the demo. He still remembered her laughing, saying her mother’s insistence on her shipping them to LA from England had finally paid off. Klara was harmonizing with him in his head, on her strings next to him.

_You'll sing me sad songs to keep me awake_

_In that bedroom where we hid away_

_Baby, I'm long gone_

_Yeah, I'm long gone_

When writing, he’d been working with the idea of what it meant to be available to someone, because in his experience, he’d either been too open or too far away. He couldn’t find that balance between committing someone and piercing yourself with them, so with each new person that entered his life, he swayed between vulnerability and distance like a pendulum. Piers was so far to the left lately that he hadn’t processed any of the kinds of feelings that this piece of his work discussed, so his voice rasped around the words that cut against him with their stony, jagged edges.

_And your voice cracks like a piano_

_You keep moving_

_But where are you going?_

_Baby, we're long gone_

_Yeah, we're long gone_

* * *

“What song is that?” He blurted out, causing Piers to jump and whip around.

“Ah! Fuck, how long’ve you been there?” he snapped out of the soulful trance Raihan had been watching him in.

“Sorry, sorry,” he laughed nervously, leaning on the doorframe. “I heard you singing _New Slang_ and it sounded really good, and then I really liked the second one, but I don’t know it. Who sings that?” he asked, feeling comfortable. Over time, he’d figured that with Piers, it was only awkward if you _made_ it awkward, and he was actually a pretty cool guy, from the few chance encounters they’d had, as long as you treated him like you were already friends.

“I sing that,” Piers managed humbly. “I wrote it.”

“Oh,” Raihan felt his cheeks glowing, and he averted his eyes. “Well, it’s good. It’s a really good breakup song,” he revealed. He’d been hanging off of every word that came out of Piers’s mouth the moment he’d started singing. It felt like he had laced his fingers between his ribs and pulled everything away until all the hurt could flow out, and sitting there with his eyes closed listening had been so therapeutic that he wanted to do it again. He felt seen, and knowing that Piers wrote it, and that he could have felt something in the shape of what he was feeling…

“You have that posted anywhere?”

“We’ve got a Bandcamp,” he replied modestly, reaching for his phone. “I’ll text you the link.” Raihan felt his phone buzz when he sent something over, but he felt like Piers might expire if he opened it right now.

“You’re up early,” Raihan observed.

“Never went to bed.”

“Me neither,” he admitted.

He’d been up all night editing down a VOD for an eight hour stream, which was supposed to go live this afternoon, but would likely be late. He just hadn’t had it in him to work on it before about midnight, and it probably wasn’t his best work, but luckily, it was a squad stream, and Leon had picked up a lot of the slack in the energy department.

He and Piers stared at each other again, and as much as he tried to play it cool, they both had the same concealed, tired-and-emotionally-exposed expression on their faces.

“I was gonna get McDonald’s breakfast if you wanted,” Raihan scratched the back of his head. “You wanna come with?”

Piers rolled his shoulders back and winced when his back cracked.

“Yeah, sure. Why not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the Chili Peppers can have Chad, a midwestern boy who eats drums for breakfast, then Piers's band can have Milo, a Welsh boy who eats drums for breakfast. Nessa plays guitar (among other things) and Klara plays bass (also among other things) because I am writing this for me and I said so, don't worry about it... :)
> 
> I also stole Piers's writing process from the writing of Under the Bridge don't worry about that either :) I like rhcp a normal amount :)


	7. Chapter 7

“Isn’t there one across the street from’ere?”

Raihan heard the crackle and crunch of the long-untended asphalt of the car park beneath Piers’s boots. He admired a guy who could be so consistent with his look so early in the morning just for an Egg McMuffin.

“Yeah, but no Drive Thru. I prefer eating at home for this kinda thing,” he fished for his keys in the pocket of the basketball shorts he’d been wearing all night. He hadn’t bothered dressing up that much, but after the first time he’d headed out in what was essentially his pajamas on an errand and someone stopped him for a picture, he always made sure he was wearing something he’d at least not be embarrassed to be photographed in.

“There’re Drive Thru McDonald’s in Hollywood?”

“I think at least one? Isn’t there one by the gay bar?” he recalled, unlocking the doors to his orange Kia Soul. Piers seemed to hesitate for a moment before climbing in, but it didn’t bother him. He was used to people taking a second to reserve any judgements about his very eccentric ride.

“Oh, yeah,” Piers unfolded his sunglasses and slipped them on in the passenger seat. “That one’s kinda a shithole, eh. Isn’t there one on Western?”

“By Little Armenia?” the engine roared to life—or as close to roaring as a Kia Soul could manage—and Raihan started to back out of the space and rumble over the pavement in their lot. “I think so. Let’s go there, yeah?”

“Sure.”

His car connected to Bluetooth and started playing whatever his phone had been streaming—thank _God_ wasn’t anything too out there, just an old Kendrick Lamar album that he liked for background noise while he was trimming down VODs for YouTube. He could see Piers bobbing his head to it a little bit while he glanced around.

“You like Kendrick?” he asked, clicking on his turn signal.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Just didn’t think you were the type,” Raihan admitted. Man, he should have vacuumed or something before bringing Piers in here. Wasn’t exactly very sexy of him to invite someone to sit in the crisp bag crumbs in his passenger seat.

“I try not to stick to one genre,” Piers was fidgeting with something in the seat next to him, but he didn’t get a very good look. It sort of looked like he was examining the ends of his hair. “Writin’s a whole lot easier ‘f you can pull inspiration from a bigger pool. I try to keep up where I can.” He paused to lean over a bit and laugh, “You’ve got _no_ petrol. You think you’re gonna make it?”

“Nah, we’ll be fine, I can coast it,” Raihan dismissed. He was something of an expert in depleting all of his gas before refueling. Someone had told him once it was better for the engine, or something.

Piers’s conditioner or laundry detergent or—he cursed the thought— _fragrance_ wafted toward him and he forced himself to inch away slightly. There was no need for any of that right now, no matter how delicate and herbal and vaguely floral it was. It suited him, whatever he had on.

The thing with learning more about this fascinating guy was that the only way to get through to him was to keep talking, but he didn’t know much about him, so all he could talk about was himself. Raihan wasn’t very good at monitoring when that kind of thing became too much, and his last wish would be to bore Piers, but he was jittery with nerves and couldn’t handle the silence right now.

“I was up for most of the night editing down a stream,” he said to fill the air.

“Mm? Playin’ anythin’ fun?”

“My mate wanted to beat my arse in _Hearthstone_ so we hopped on. It was amazing, actually, considering he hadn’t touched that game in three or four years. I’ve literally never beat the guy, long as I’ve known ‘em—Ah, c’mon, _Lexus_ , light’s green!” Raihan drummed his fingers impatiently on the wheel.

“I didn’t know people were still playin’ that game,” Piers remarked, revealing nothing.

* * *

As soon as they were pulling out of the Drive Thru with their meals in hand, Raihan sipping on his Iced Caramel Macchiato through a reusable straw from his keys and Piers waiting for his black coffee to cool enough to not burn off his taste buds, Raihan’s gas light went on and Piers glanced at him knowingly over his shades.

“I was still right, we made it here,” he feigned a defense, pulling into the left lane to head toward the Shell station down the street. He heard Piers fishing around for his chips in the paper bag.

“Want anything to drink?” Raihan ducked his head back into the car after stepping out, leaning down to address Piers from the driver’s side with his hand resting on the roof of the car.

“‘M alright, thanks.”

His tank was on the passenger side, so he didn’t have much to do while he filled his tank but look at Piers, who was taking delicate little bites out of his hash brown and looking at him through his sunglasses. The window and door were both closed, so they couldn’t say anything, just watch each other, with Raihan leaning his back on the yellow pumping station and smiling shyly and Piers fighting a grin from behind his food.

It was a perfect storm of awkward, shy, and coy, with how little interest either of them had in looking away. Raihan didn’t let himself indulge in the idea of capturing Piers’s attention very often, but this flirtation was so harmless and so candid that he let it slip through the cracks. Chuckles started to bubble up from his chest and he saw Piers’s shoulders twitch, to imply that he was doing the same.

When the pump’s handle clicked and alerted him that it was finished, he jumped—quite cartoonishly—in surprise, pulled out of his rosy fantasy in which Piers watched him and ate his hash brown for the rest of their days. His passenger laughed outright at that, flashing his teeth, and Raihan mourned the door separating them, making it so that he could not hear it.

It was just past six fifteen by the time they made it home, the sun well on its way to the top of the sky, and Raihan’s stomach growled when he unwrapped his sandwich at the table. He took one bite and slumped over, absolutely in heaven, cherishing the McGriddles in his hands.

“Fuck, that hits the spot.”

“Well worth it, I’d say,” Piers agreed, spreading a pad of butter over a stack of hotcakes.

“Should do this more often,” Raihan thought out loud. He tried his best to eat a balanced diet, but something like McDonald’s nourished the soul just as much as a grain bowl nourished the body.

“We should.”

There may as well have been a giant, neon exclamation point hanging over Raihan’s head with the way he lit up. He wasn’t even considering the possibility of doing this with Piers again, as much as he wanted to, but Piers was basically _inviting_ him to, and he could keep it in his back pocket whenever he wanted an excuse to hang out with him. He concealed his excitement behind a particularly big gulp of his drink.

“So, uh, what’re you up to today?”

“Workin’ late, s‘bout it.”

“Me, too,” he rubbed his face. “Short stream tonight, though. What time are you off?”

“I’ll be home by half-two.”

“I’ll probably still be up, if you wanna smoke tonight.”

“Actually, I was wonderin’,'' Piers began, keeping his eyes on the coffee in his hands. “I’ve got a—I bought a bedframe a few weeks ago. Haven’t had the time to build it yet.”

“Want some help?”

“It’ll be late, but if you’re up for it,” he chased a piece of sausage around his plate with a fork. “I could use the help.”

* * *

Around 7pm, Raihan’s phone started buzzing so hard he’d worried it would fall off his desk.

_pssst_

_raihan_

_you busy??_

_hello_

_RAIHANNnnnNnNNn_

His phone chirped at him as each one of the messages came through. His first instinct was Sonia, because she was the only one who sent this many direct messages in a row.

_@RaihanTV: you good??_

_@sonihunnie: we gotta come over. like now._

_@RaihanTV: uhhh that should be fine. why?_

_@sonihunnie: leon made dinner_

_@RaihanTV: uh oh_

_@RaihanTV: should i ask what he made_

_@sonihunnie: it’s RAW, raihan_

_@sonihunnie: paul hollywood voice) ^_

_@sonihunnie: i told him we were supposed to come game with you tonight._

_@RaihanTV: lmao_

_@RaihanTV: come on over then!! i need a break anyway_

_@sonihunnie: dinner’s on me ilu_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew! been a while since I posted anything. i'm back at work and it's been kicking my ass so i appreciate anyone who stuck around to wait ;~; 
> 
> raihan drives a [2018 kia soul in orange](https://blogmedia.dealerfire.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2017/10/2018-kia-soul-orange_o.jpg) and no, i will not elaborate on why i made this choice LOL. i hope you fellow californians appreciate how californian these two have become, as the mcdonald's by the gay bar, the one near little armenia, and the one across from where they live are all real places. stay tuned next time for a special visit from some familiar characters :D


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhu this one got kinda long... enjoy!

Raihan swiped over to his conversation with Piers to let him know about the change in plans. They mostly exchanged messages about Piers heading to work or rehearsal, or Raihan starting his stream. A few times, Piers had mentioned he was heading out to buy groceries and asked if Raihan wanted anything, but he could never think of a good answer that wouldn’t take Piers too far out of his way through the aisles, so he never took him up on it.

Raihan wished that they would talk more, but it seemed kind of silly to strike up a conversation via text with someone who was just doing their own thing in the other room. Piers had been practicing something on guitar pretty diligently as of late, from what he could hear, and he didn’t want to interrupt that.

 _hey! some of my friends are coming over tonight kinda short notice,_ he began. But he remembered how shy Piers could be and how…forward they were.

_but they’re pretty cool and actually kinda wanna meet you. no pressure, obviously._

Piers might not want to hang out, and they didn’t know each other well enough that Raihan felt comfortable fully attempting to merge these social circles, but in his heart of hearts, he liked him a lot and wanted very much for him to get along with his friends. He knew that he’d made a commitment—one that he was very much looking forward to—and that he had to acknowledge it. Didn’t want him to feel like he was dumping him to hang out with Leon and Sonia instead.

_i can still totally step away at some point to help you with your bed and stuff tho!_

Piers didn’t have read receipts on, but he figured he’d probably catch it between now and when he got off work. In the meantime, Leon and Sonia’s arrival warranted some preparation.

Leon was probably going to want to falcon-punch his way to victory in Smash like he always did, so he plugged everything in to the TV and made sure the cartridge was in the console.

Sonia must have been messaging him from the Uber, because they were knocking at his door in a matter of minutes despite living all the way out in Koreatown. She greeted him with a hug, whispering a _thanks again_ into his ear before pulling away, hoisting up a case of White Claw as a preliminary offering. She set her things on the table and Raihan braced himself for an overdue bone-crushing hug from one of his best, most cherished friends.

Strong arms wrapped around him and brought with them all their warmth and all their love, leaving Raihan to relax and return his gesture. It felt good, considering the steep drop in closeness and contact he’d been experiencing as of late.

“Hey, man,” he laughed, mentally changing the subject, wrapping his arms around Leon’s back. “Good to see you!”

“I’m so, so sorry I haven’t been around!” he replied with remorse, pulling away to look up at Raihan with huge, shiny eyes. “I wanted to help you move all her stuff out, but I—with everything going on I just,” he heaved a sigh. “I couldn’t get away. I’ve missed you.”

“I wasn’t worried about it,” Raihan looked down at him with a calm smile. “I was still able to stream with you the other night. You were going through something just as much as I was.”

“Yeah, but I _introduced you,_ ” he insisted, guilt rising up his face before he pushed it away. Leon’s hand fell from his shoulder. “How’ve you been?”

“Good. Better,” Raihan took a deep breath.

If he was being honest, Leon being MIA was a big part of why he’d been feeling so lonely. Him getting whisked away doing damage control with everything that happened at his company—former company—at the same time that Oleana, who was also very entrenched in it, left him, meant that he was vulnerable and broken up by one person who held his heart, and couldn’t confide in the other. He’d been getting by watching an old series he and Leon had recorded in their late teens every night before bed. Between that, talking to Sonia, and trying to stay active in his own little community, he’d survived the worst of it, but it still lightened the load quite a bit to see Leon again.

No doubt, Sonia had kept him filled in on how he was doing. Each day was easier, and now that he was over a month out, he was getting to the place where he was starting to _enjoy_ being single, living with a roommate, and having the freedom to think about just himself, rather than anticipating someone else’s feelings and reactions.

Sure, his crush on Piers was growing just as much as Oleana faded away, but that was all in good fun and likely something he wouldn’t act on anytime soon. He wondered if Sonia had been telling Leon about that.

“Is Piers here?” he asked with excitement, and Sonia popped up behind him with a similarly eager expression.

“You two,” Raihan shook his head. “No, he probably won’t be off work until two in the morning.”

“Can we spend the night? New sitting room looks comfy,” Sonia noted gleefully, her heels tapping rhythmically against the floor as she scurried to inspect the throw pillows.

“Sure, but you’ll have to stay in my room.” He didn’t want Piers feeling like he had to tiptoe past them if they were tangled up on the couch in the morning, and he didn’t mind the company in his room. The bed had only recently stopped feeling so empty at night anyway.

Sonia had made herself comfortable on the couch, crossing her legs with a pillow in her lap.

“Right, so, should we order something, then? We can get something for Piers, too.”

Raihan ran his fingers through his hair with a deep breath. They weren’t going to let this go, which, endearing as it was, was dangerous for him. Sonia stopped being a voice of reason about things like this when Leon was around. With Piers as skittish as he was even just between the two of them, he had to approach this with tact, or his well-meaning friends would scare him away.

* * *

Another thankfully-mostly-uneventful shift drew to a close, with Piers undoing his waist apron and tucking it under his shoulder before ducking into his heavy, leaning sedan. He filed through the envelope full of cash with his name on it. It wasn’t bad at all for a Thursday night.

Some of his regulars had brought friends and they spent half their night asking him to say different phrases in his accent—which was exhausting and generally unwelcome—but they kept giggling and sliding him bills, so he’d say _chicken_ as many times as they needed to hear it.

Either way, he was glad to be on his way home. He’d gotten about a thousand texts from Raihan explaining how sorry he was for having friends at all, offering to buy him food, _insisting_ on feeding him, promising that they could still build his bed, and so on. He’d been somewhat looking forward to it, but it wasn’t anything to go over the top like this for. Raihan was acting like he was deeply betraying Piers’s trust, or asking for a huge favor. The concern was nice, but totally unnecessary.

He was more worried about these “friends” of Raihan’s, and was banking on the chance that they wouldn’t be awake when he got home.

That turned out to definitively not be the case when he could hear whooping and hollering from the other side of the door. He slid in his keys and braced himself.

The first thing he saw was the litany of cans of boozy seltzer—naturally, he couldn’t imagine Raihan and his friends drinking anything else—crowding around their coffee table. Raihan noticed him first, and then the two characters on either side of him both lit up in that special way that drunk people loved to do.

“You must be Piers!” an all-too-familiar voice directed itself at him. This guy’s smile was just as bright in person, even more so with the telltale glow of alcohol shimmering on his cheeks. His signature purple hair was fanning out under a cap, but not the one he usually wore to events or online. “Great to meet you! I’m—”

“Yeah, I,” Piers stammered, saying the first thing that came to mind, “I—I know you. I mean, who you are,” _really normal, human way to start, la. Keep goin’_. “My kid sister’s a huge fan. Been watchin’ you for years over her shoulder.” His face burned with shame at the completely unnecessary and embarrassing string of words that just continued to spill out of his mouth, but took his hand anyway. “Nice to meet you, eh, _K1NG_.”

K1NGSGARD, as he’d been known around the net since he won his first TCG championship in his hometown of Anaheim over a decade ago as a child. He had since gotten into VGC, and then gaming in general, all under the then-fledgling MacroNet YouTube network of creators, which had placed him at the center of all their success.

According to Marnie, the chairman of the network had gotten wrapped up in a huge scandal when someone revealed the predatory practices they were using to sign new kids onto their roster. K1NG had ended up leaving in an explosive legal battle when he found out the chairman was dragging his name into things to convince children to sign their lives away like he had. A whole slew of young YouTubers were coming forward with testimonies and stories of their run-ins with MacroNet—offers they’d received, things they’d signed as teens that still affected them as adults, financial discrepancies and loopholes that filled the chairman’s pockets instead of their own… It was a major upset in the community, from what he understood, and K1NG had been laying low and trying to disconnect himself from all of it, and help as many people as he could get out as well. Apparently, he’d taken up streaming in the last two or three months, and had started from scratch as an independent content creator.

The general consensus seemed to be that he didn’t do anything wrong but set a precedent, and Piers didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise.

“Really? Well, I’m flattered! But you can call me Leon,” he said, surprisingly humbly for someone with millions of fans worldwide. It was strange to see that signature purple fringe pushed back away from his face.

“Leon, then, ‘s a pleasure.” Piers turned his attention to the redhead standing behind him that looked like she was about to vibrate out of her jumper. She eyed him with an equally flushed, glowing complexion and an equally excited smile—which made him want to shrink—and waited for her to say something. Leon’s wife, Sonia, one of the most prolific and underrated YouTubers out there, grinned wordlessly at him. Somehow, she and Klara were friends, and Klara had offered to introduce them hundreds of times, but he’d always made up an excuse. It was just his luck that Raihan seemed to know them both as well.

Piers wanted nothing more than to hide the chipped nail polish on his fingers.

He could still remember growing up watching her makeup tutorials after school, mirroring her every move and trying to flick out his eyeliner the way she did. They were around the same age, but he still felt like he was in the presence of one of his role models. He wasn’t about to slip up again and admit that to her, though.

Even at this ungodly hour and after a night of drinking, every hair of hers was in place, her makeup hadn’t moved at all, and she looked like she’d just walked out of a Victoria’s Secret PINK catalogue from 2004. In the best way—she had years of practice pulling off any look she wanted.

“Sonia, right?” he said uncomfortably, and she just continued to stare at him.

“You’re _so_ cute,” she beamed, taking a step closer. Piers started deliberating between passing out or melting into the floor. “I’ve been dying to meet you forever! I’ve heard loads about you.”

“Hey! Go easy on him!” Raihan finally intervened, sounding equally embarrassed to have been so easily given away like that. “He just got off work.”

“Should we take a picture? For your sister?” Leon suggested charitably, and despite the fact that Piers wanted nothing more than to hide in his room, Marnie would never believe him if he didn’t have proof. He shrugged.

“Sure.”

“Raihan! You’ve got long arms, let’s use your phone,” Sonia suggested, circling around to fix Leon’s fringe. They all crowded together on the couch, Piers ending up squeezed between Leon and Raihan. They probably took ten or eleven photos before settling on one that both Raihan and Sonia could agree on.

“I’ll, uh, send this to you later,” Raihan mumbled, pocketing his phone. It was a relief that he seemed to be at least half as nervous as Piers was.

“Oh, your food,” Sonia picked up the conversation before it fell away, and started digging through the takeaway containers on the coffee table. “I didn’t know what you liked, so hopefully this is okay!”

“You really didn’ have to,” he said quietly.

With a carton of gyros now in his lap, Piers would have thought it rude to not at least stay to eat some of it. Leon at least had the courtesy to shuffle over to the other couch and beckon Sonia to come with.

“So, how was work?” Raihan asked cautiously, offering him a Joy-Con that he accepted without really thinking about.

* * *

Piers claimed he didn’t really play Smash, but nobody who immediately made beeline for Inkling—the purple one with the plaid skirt, specifically—and actually knew how to effectively budget his ink “didn’t really play.”

Raihan was thoroughly impressed not only with how he played, but how he riled Leon up and managed to shepherd him into a very friendly bout of shit-talking, which Leon was not by any means known to do. It was a side of Piers he hadn’t really seen yet, with a wicked grin on his face when he feinted one way to dash past all three of them and obliterate them with his Final.

In the end, Leon got them all like he always did, but it was a much more interesting fight than he’d anticipated.

“You’re really good,” Leon clapped Piers on the back. “You should stream with us sometime!” In the face of praise, Piers’s confidence started to melt away again and his back curved back into a slouch.

Leon wanted to make everyone he met into a new gaming friend, particularly when he was drunk, and Sonia was already half-asleep on the couch next to him, so Raihan pushed himself up with his hands.

“I’m gonna get these two to bed,” he declared. He didn’t feel too bad about it. Piers was acting shy, and Leon and Sonia had been hanging out here for hours.

Piers excused himself, citing a need for a change of clothes and a quick tidy-up in his bedroom before they got started, so Raihan was left to herd his friends into his bed.

“Leon, honey, can you remove my makeup for me?” Sonia drawled lazily.

“Mm. The wipes in your purse?”

“Yes please,” she hummed, very comfortable among Raihan’s pillows and kicking off her heels under the covers. Raihan wanted to leave them to their sleepy musings, so he started to step away, but Leon stopped him.

“I like him,” he said genuinely, in that way that Raihan could always count on. “He’s fun to play with. He was nervous, so he must care about your friends’ opinions of him.”

“I mean, he lives here,” Raihan shrugged, “of course he cares.”

“No,” Sonia interjected, rolling onto her back and letting her hair flare out over a pillow. “That’s not it.”

“Whatever you say,” Raihan dismissed with a weakening hum in his chest.

He found Piers waiting for him in the living room, sifting through the mess of takeaway containers and empty cans and disposing of them. He looked relieved, now that it was just the two of them.

“Hey, don’t worry about the mess. I’ll deal with it in the morning,” Raihan eased, following him while he drifted around the space and putting things back into place. He was even fluffing up the throw pillows.

“It’s the least I can do.”

“No, it’s the least _I_ can do. It’ll be there tomorrow, I still feel pretty bad about letting those two ambush you.”

“‘Salright. They were just curious. And...had been drinkin’. Was kinda endearin’ if I’m honest. Wouldn’t be in the business I’m in if I had a problem dealin’ with people who drank their weight in Claws, yanno.”

He had his back to him while he fussed with the trash, but Raihan could see his head dip to hide a little smile. He would have loved to know what he did to cause it—if he was even what did—but he didn’t mind not knowing if it meant he got to see it. Piers turned around, looking tired, but still playful, and maybe even grateful. Raihan wasn’t confident he was good at reading his tone, yet, but that sounded right.

“Well, uh, that’s good. You ready?”

“Yeah. Mind the clutter.” Piers led him inside.

Piers’s interior style was a lot more functional than Raihan’s was, certainly not _cluttered_ , and it looked like he’d been collecting furniture, or what little of it there was, from anywhere he could find. Nothing looked new or particularly comfortable, but everything from the bookshelf full of notebooks and shoes with the paint chipping off to the little mirror on his desk appeared to be well-used and well-loved. Everything had a place in Piers’s room.

The only thing he didn’t expect was that the walls were surprisingly bare. He figured he’d have a poster of his favorite band up or something, but the only real decoration on the walls was a string of lights hanging from some 3M hooks.

He noted with a hitch of pride that Piers had been keeping his makeup in the organizer he’d picked up for him.

After drinking in the initial scan of the place, it hit Raihan that the whole room _smelled_ like Piers, and it kept wafting past him, but never dissipated. It was almost dizzying, the closeness that it simulated, like he had his nose buried in his hair with his arms around his waist.

He didn’t need to be thinking about that right now, or ever, for that matter. Maybe he’d had more to drink than he thought.

There wasn’t any room to build the bed without moving the mattress, so Raihan helped him lean it up against the wall while Piers discarded his blankets in the corner. He didn’t know how someone so small could survive with only two; in fact, he had at least four on his bed in the other room.

Once all the parts were out of the box and organized into piles, Raihan sat cross-legged on the carpet across from him and examined the instructions.

“This doesn’t seem too bad.”

“Really? Looks like fuckin’ nightmare to me,” Piers crawled over to read over his shoulder. That proximity sent a jolt of electricity through Raihan and he jumped, laughing awkwardly, scrambling to start getting the pieces of Section A together.

“We—well, no worries! I love building stuff. You just sit tight then, I’ll uh,” Raihan rambled, “I’ll take care of it. You can put some music on if you want.”

Piers gave him a funny smile and a quirked brow, but backed off. Raihan had his head down, surveying the work in front of him, but he could sense that Piers had perched somewhere near his desk, doing something with his hair again.

As jittery as he was from the excitement of being in Piers’s actual bedroom, he really did enjoy building things and just being around Piers, so he felt himself slotting into his happy place while he crawled around the floor screwing this or that into its place, chatting with his flatmate about whatever came to mind.

“So you’ve got a little sister? How old is she?” Raihan asked, expecting Piers’s shyness to dust over whatever answer he was comfortable giving.

“Sixteen. Real talented little lass, that one. Swear if she ever made it overseas she’d be the biggest star in the world,” he began with more wind in his sails than Raihan had been expecting. That hard-to-read smile started brightening into something more like pride. “Whip smart, too. She’s been gettin’ good marks in school back home, from what’ve heard.”

“She still in Liverpool, then?” he asked. Piers never talked this much about anything, but it was clear that he cared deeply for her, and the warmth in his eyes made him think that he’d been wanting to think of her lately.

“Mhm. Back home with Mum. Been savin’ to have them come out next summer, maybe.”

“Has it been awhile since you’ve seen them?”

“Couple years, yeah.”

“Years, huh?” Raihan didn’t look up, but wondered what his life would be like if he didn’t fly home to see his parents once a year. He glanced around Piers’s room again and realized for the first time that not everybody had the privilege to move far away and stay close to the ones they left behind. It would be inappropriate to bring something like that up to Piers, so he just kept asking him questions, instead.

“So music runs in your family?” Ah, fuck. Screwed that one on backwards.

“Yeah. She’s way better at it than I am, but somehow I’m the one who ended up out here,” he gestured around the room with some sarcasm, “livin’ the high life.”

“Haha, hey, your room looks a lot better than my first place.”

“Looks a lot better’n my first flat, too.”

They kept up this dance of alluding to harder or less glamorous times but never fully expanding on what they were saying. Raihan didn’t need to know the gritty details of how Piers fed himself when he arrived in the city, and so there was no need for him to disclose the time he spent scraping by and getting used to living in the city, either.

Back then, all his money went into upgrading his equipment. He had to be on par with Leon, who had a whole network of people finding him sponsorships—including _Microsoft,_ who would just send him a new toy whenever they felt like it—and with a considerably smaller following, having to drop thousands of dollars to get a new microphone and camera just to meet the industry standard had minimized his budget for things like groceries or utilities.

His channel had seen a lot of growth in the last four years, and he’d even considered hiring an assistant until the structure of his life shifted so drastically.

“I think it’s done?” Raihan squinted at the diagram on the paper in front of him, comparing it to the frame he’d built while Piers sat at his desk and watched him over the heel of his palm.

“Looks right to me.”

“You should probably test it before I head out,” Raihan grunted when he pushed the mattress back into place. “It _is_ still almost four, and I’ve not slept much today.”

“Seems pretty sound.” Piers sat on his bed. It didn’t falter or strain, which was a good sign—but Raihan didn’t want to leave yet. Piers was watching him with eyes that led him to believe he was thinking something similar.

“How….how is it?” He ventured.

“Much more comfortable than bein’ on the floor,” he mused in a different tone of voice that Raihan hadn’t heard before, sliding his torso down to rest on his side. His body started to pick up the signs before his head did—that much was certain.

Raihan stood there in comfortable denial, Piers’s velvety tone hanging dense in the air between them.

“Not interested in tryin’ out your handiwork?” Piers swept his hair out of his face, behind his ear, and rolled over onto his back.

_Okay, fine. You can have this, too. It’s not gonna hurt anyone to just sit with him._

The mattress bowed under his weight when he took a seat, but one look from Piers told him he wasn’t inviting him to _sit_ , so he held his breath and reclined back further, letting his head rest on the junction between the back wall and the mattress.

Something happened at that point. Piers offered him a pillow so his head wasn’t against the wall, but the rest of the details were fuzzy.

He couldn’t recall either of them exchanging any words; to be honest, he wasn’t sure anything even needed to be said. They’d both been making poor attempts to veil their attraction toward each other for at least a few weeks. It was entirely possible that the two of them just willed this situation into existence.

Piers was barely any weight at all on top of him, with a thumb sliding over his cheek and all his hair draping them both away from the light—off in their own little world, where Raihan could shudder and feel Piers’s breath against his lips when he chuckled in response.

It wasn’t like kissing Klara, with her intentions so solely focused on personal satisfaction, or even Oleana, who always felt like she had something to prove to him, with a hard line pressed into her mouth. Piers felt like he was stroking his lips, his tongue, with his own, capturing him in intoxicating caress after intoxicating caress that blended together and never started, never ended. He felt so wanted and cared for that he reached for his waist and guided him closer, closing the space between their chests to get _more_ of it, whatever “it” was, and Piers responded in turn by rolling to the side and throwing a leg over his waist.

He dared to scrape his teeth over Piers’s lip and earned himself a shudder of his own, and Piers ground his hips forward, wanting, into Raihan. He’d been so lonely and so starved for so long, and now, this…

This?

What _was_ he doing?

The record must’ve scratched outwardly as much as it did inwardly, because Piers pulled away to look at him with concern.

“You okay?” he whispered, fearful. Raihan’s pulse roared and his stomach threatened to turn.

This wasn’t right. He was chasing intimacy anywhere he could find it and—and sure, he was really into Piers. And Piers was probably a great guy—no, he _knew_ Piers was a great guy! That was precisely why he liked him so much. But he wasn’t okay enough with being alone yet that he could seek out someone’s company for the right reasons. If he did that, he would fuck things up with Piers even more than...he had already. And that wasn’t the kind of relationship to be having with someone one month into your lease.

“Sorry,” he sputtered, sitting up and turning away. “Sorry. I can’t do this,” he stood. Piers watched him wordlessly, and the words just kept spilling out of Raihan’s mouth.

“Not because I don’t want to. I _really_ —wow, yeah, I really want to. And I wish I could, but that’s why I can’t.”

He didn’t want things with Piers to end the way they did with Oleana. He didn’t trust himself to see the signs he needed to be wary of, and he wasn’t ready to put his heart completely out in the open again. Raihan knew that a blow like that wouldn’t be something he survived twice, and the thought of things ending sourly with Piers struck fear into his heart that reminded him bitterly: the only way to guarantee no painful end was for it to not begin at all.

“I mean, I just got out of a long-term relationship. You know that much, right? I shouldn’t have let this go this far. I like you a lot, Piers, but, well, I think I’m kind of seeing someone. I don’t know what the nature of that relationship is, though. I shouldn’t have,” Raihan turned to stare at the door. Less than ten feet away, her ghost still lingered. Bloody red lipstick smeared all over his sheets, on her arms, her normally so well-kept hair shrouding the tears in her eyes when she couldn’t even face him. He could still hear her saying it.

“This was a mistake.”

Only after echoing her words did he realize how much they hurt, and how much they must have hurt the person who was hearing them now. To avoid any further damage, Raihan started to back out of the room.

“I should go.”

“Wait,” Piers finally spoke, pulling him in with the unwavering, unreadable tone in his voice.

“Yeah?”

“Goodnight.”

Raihan’s hand trembled on the door.

“Goodnight.”

* * *

_@RaihanTV: hey_

_@poisonsweetie: dude it’s like 4 in the morning_

_@RaihanTV: so? you’re tweeting_

_@poisonsweetie: ok you got me there!! i’m watching sailor moon rn what’s up? :0_

_@RaihanTV: you free tomorrow?_

_@RaihanTV: uhhh, today i guess. but later_

_@poisonsweetie: oh hell yeah actually i am_

_@poisonsweetie: come club with me tonight!! i feel like dancing_

_@poisonsweetie: i know somewhere we might be able to score some free drinks :3c_

_@RaihanTV: sure, sounds fun!_

Raihan extricated himself from Leon and Sonia’s tangle of limbs enough to shove his phone under his pillow and close his eyes. At some point, sleep came, but not without a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nine year old Leon didn't know that there was a 'u' in "king's guard" when he made his Neopets account, and unfortunately for him, sometimes your online alias just...sticks. forever.
> 
> next time, we'll get to hear about what Piers thinks about all this. sit tight :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing 2 say about this one except that it was supposed to be about twice this long but i ended up breaking a few scenes off for the following chapter :)

If Raihan didn’t want him, that was fine.

His explanation made no sense, with the way he contradicted himself. He’d clearly been grappling for whatever words he could find, and Piers had been there before. He understood—eerily well, actually, to the point that it sounded like excuses he’d given people in the past when he was just too raw in the wake of something ending to start the engine back up again. _Wrong place_ , _wrong time_ treaded paths beneath his lips from every time he’d said it, but only now did he realize how humiliating and frustrating it was when someone used it to guard themselves from you.

How presumptuous of Raihan to assume Piers had the capacity to hurt him. How presumptuous of himself to assume that he wouldn’t.

As much as it punched the air out of him to watch Raihan get up and leave, he was raised better than to demand affection someone wasn’t ready to give. Especially if he was “seeing someone.” Klara _had_ been quiet, not mentioning Raihan at all for weeks, so even if Raihan was being upfront about not knowing what the two of them were, it was entirely possible that Klara had finally decided to actually be vulnerable with someone. Not that there was anything harmful about what she’d been doing before. Piers just knew her better than to assume that this streak of having sex with heartbroken people for fun wasn’t meddling with the part of her brain that made her feel so lesser all the time.

If Klara was going to fall in love, Raihan wouldn’t be a bad choice.

So Piers decided to leave it at that. Raihan told him no, and he could respect that. Hell, if he was as drunk as his friends, he might not even remember what happened. And he got a sturdy bed frame out of it. What more could he ask for?

He slept until late into the afternoon; much later than usual, but it felt good to catch up after his last two days. Especially since they were working on nailing down new songs for the show next month, he needed to be a little more alert than he was known to be.

They ended up sending him home, anyway. Nessa said he looked like he’d been run over—well, more than usual—and Klara was stealing guilty glances at him that made his stomach sour. The last thing he needed right now was her pity over how much of Raihan’s mind she’d been occupying.

And of course, because the fates were cruel, Raihan was just slipping on his shoes when he walked in.

“Oh, hey. You’re home early. How was rehearsal?” he asked cheerfully.

“Good, thanks,” he lied, thumbing the handle on his guitar’s case.

“Uh, about last night,” Raihan hesitated. Piers cut him off with a raised hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” he counted on his fingers, “you were drunk, we were both workin’ on almost no sleep, and you’ve got a couple of reasons to not be wantin’ to get tangled up with your flatmate. ‘S not really in our best interest, anyway.” Piers shrugged. Saying them out loud didn’t really make him believe the words any more, but he was trying to heal from the rejection gracefully. Raihan didn’t have to humiliate him with an apology right now.

“You’re right, I guess. Kinda sucks, but,” he sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I liked what we had, too. Before last night. I mean—wait, last night was still fun, y-you’re a really good kisser, but, you know what I—”

Piers stopped him gently.

“Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen, yeah?” he suggested. “Fun as it was, I’m not thinkin’ it was the most, uh,” he shifted, looking for words, “ _calculated_ decision, from either’ve us.” Raihan’s eyes softened as if he had been the one sitting on the bed with nothing to say while Piers walked out of the room last night, citing a new relationship and an unwillingness to explore one somehow at the same time.

“Yeah, I think that’s probably for the best, too,” Raihan pushed all the air out of his lungs and looked away, thinking about something, dismissed it, and turned his attention back to Piers. “Anyway, I’m headed to the market, do you need anything?”

Piers took a peek at his side of the fridge.

“Yeah, eggs, actually.”

“You got it!”

Raihan grabbed his keys and went on his merry way.

* * *

After spending an unknown amount of time meandering through the aisles of the local _Whole Foods_ , Raihan took care of the rest of his errands and headed home. He was looking forward to a distracting night out with Klara, even if he knew he was going to have to have a conversation with her that made him nervous.

They hadn’t technically set any new boundaries since they started meeting, but they were getting closer and there was a possibility that Klara might want to know if he, for example, spent some time kissing Piers. She might not actually care, but if it was something that would upset her, he’d rather tell her now than have her find out later. He also itched to clarify the nature of their arrangement again, because saying they were “only sleeping together” didn’t make sense if they were continuing to go on dates and not sleep together. He didn’t know if he wanted that to change, but hoped that getting her opinion would clear the fog a little bit.

Raihan changed into something sleeker and black at Klara’s suggestion that they match, since she, like him, planned an outfit for every night out just for the mirror selfie. They hadn’t decided whether or not to post pictures together in public, yet, though.

She picked him up in her tight little dress in the evening, pulling him in for a hug and pulling away to look over his outfit.

“You look cute,” she squeezed his arms. “You really know how to dress up a t-shirt, hon.”

“I was about to say, you look stunning,” Raihan smiled down at her. “You sure you wanna drive? If we’re gonna be drinking, I can call a ride.”

“I’m all the way out in Burbank, if I get too drunk to drive, I’d rather crash in my car somewhere than pay a surcharge to get home,” she shrugged.

“You can just stay the night again, you know,” he offered. She was probably baiting him to open his doors to her again anyway.

“Ooh, in that case,” she snapped open the tiny, vinyl purse she had hanging off a chain on her shoulder. After some digging around, she procured a little tin of gummies and held them out to him. “Want one? I won’t take anything until we park, obviously.”

“You keep edibles with you?” Raihan laughed, popping one into his mouth anyway. Klara, as he had learned, had a real favor for sour candies, so he wasn’t surprised when the citric acid tingled on his tongue to cut through the telltale, dieselly, herbal aftertaste that most edibles had. Watermelon sugar could only hope to do so much to mask it.

“They were still in here from the last time I went out,” she tucked them away for now, swinging her keys by the lanyard while they walked out to the car park. With the amount of charms on there, he was surprised she wasn’t treating it with more care—it could probably take someone out, if she wanted it to.

Klara parked her SUV in a big, cement parking structure in West Hollywood and pressed a sparkly little square gummy onto her tongue with a manicured finger. She grinned at him, and he grinned back.

“Ready? Like I said, this club’s pretty rowdy, but it’s super fun. If we get hungry, they’ve got some killer burgers at the bar.”

“Good to know,” Raihan slid his hand into hers and did his best to shrink his steps to match her pace. She flicked through her Instagram story while they walked, stopping to check the engagement on a selfie when they reached a crosswalk. Looked like it was getting good numbers.

“Here,” she stood, waiting for him to get the door for her. They ducked inside to become two more bobbing heads in the crowd. Klara tugged him over to the bar like she knew where she was going. Raihan followed, taking in the atmosphere as best as he could.

Like any club worth their name, it was dark as hell, and the floor was covered in some sort of vaguely sticky residue that gave a bit of resistance every time he took a step. He couldn’t believe people were still playing that _Summertime Sadness_ remix in clubs, but it worked for the environment. Leave it to the gays to find a way to breathe life into a song that overplayed.

“Hey, bitch!” Klara called to the woman working behind the bar.

“Hey! You haven’t been by in a while, girl! You want your same old thing?”

They went back and forth for a few minutes, with Klara making no effort to introduce him. He didn’t mind; he didn’t want her to have to lie about who they were to each other, or worse, disclose that to someone he didn’t know. So he took his seat at the bar with her and squeezed a wedge of lime into his complementary mule, watching the lights dance on the wall behind the bar. They sat there for an hour or so, chatting about their lives, their upcoming projects, and trading bar stories.

Something caught Klara’s attention on the stage and she grabbed his jacket.

“Oh. Oh my _God_ ,” her mouth pulled into a grin. “Let’s go—let’s go dance! I uh, like this song. C’mon.”

Raihan downed the rest of his drink and let himself be whisked away.

* * *

The song changed, so Piers watched the other dancer on the left side of the stage to see if he could mirror whatever she was doing. They kept putting him out here where the poles were, despite him expressing multiple times that he didn’t have the upper-body strength to do any pole work, and there were plenty of other dancers working here that would do a better job, but he could dance around it and manage if he had to.

This one had a really trappy drum set with a pretty bass-heavy beat so it was easy to follow. Whoever was on lights tonight was having fun blacking out the whole spot with the beat, anyway, so as long as he was doing something interesting every time the lights came up, he was golden. Piers started looking around for someone to pick out of the crowd, maybe score some extra tips by capturing someone’s attention.

He saw Klara first. She was still a regular here despite having quit over a year ago, so it wasn’t a surprise to see her shaking her ass on the dance floor or anything, but he should have known better than to be shocked to see _him_ , looking a little lost, by her side. Piers was on a raised platform looking down at them, but the sinister glint in Klara’s eyes was as clear and sobering as the lights that flashed behind him. This was a low blow, even for her, to bring him here to show him off like this. He maintained eye contact while she whispered something in Raihan’s ear. The guy couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Well, he’d found someone’s attention to capture.

Piers would never retaliate against someone just for having boundaries. But the way he’d waited until _after_ putting his tongue in Piers’s mouth to outline them, while misguided, was still a little cruel, and the perfect opportunity to show him what he was missing had just fallen into Piers’s lap, whether Klara liked it or not.

It was so safe and deniable that Klara had practically given him a gift by not-so-serendipitously bringing Raihan to him. When he was up here, his whole job was to look appealing, to entertain, and to give the clubbers something to look at. To add to the environment. He hoped Raihan knew what kind of show he was in for.

Piers stopped following stage left. He stopped watching the lights for cues on when to hold a pose or what to do with his hands. Raihan’s eyes burned holes into his back whenever he turned away, and followed every move he made when Piers faced him.

Piers grabbed the pole from above his head and slid his back all the way down until he was practically sitting on his heels, knees open and inviting, running his hands all over his thighs and up his chest. He rolled his hips back when he arched back up, pacing around the pole like he was considering his next move.

He mapped his whole body with his hands like they were Raihan’s, showing him where he could have touched him if he didn’t leave.

Even Klara, who used to do this _with_ him, was looking at him with wide eyes like she couldn’t figure out how to feel about it.

Mouthing the lyrics was a cheap trick, but he actually knew the words to this song, and he was buzzing high on Raihan’s attention and engagement, so he slid back down and kneeled, pushing the boundary between dancing and the work he did in his closet, working a playful palm between his legs just to rest there, dipping a shoulder forward and flicking his hair back away from his neck.

 _You just crossed the line_ , the singer’s voice crooned sweetly over the speakers, _you’ve run out of time_.

Raihan was hanging onto every word like his life depended on it. It was so easy, especially now that he knew Raihan was attracted to him, to be selfish and lavish in his gaze for as long as he could keep it. Klara was making some feeble attempts to distract him, rubbing up against him and flashing scowls at Piers while he crawled all over the platform onstage, but this was an uphill battle that she was losing. In the end, Raihan’s eyes didn’t move unless it was to follow him.

Klara, surprisingly, wasn’t a sore loser about it, and instead fished a wad of cash out of her purse. Piers took each bill and tucked it into the band of his netting, blowing her a slow, knowing, vicious kiss as if to tell her _I know what you’re doing, nice try._

Raihan followed suit with whatever he had on hand, and Piers brushed his fingers over his wrist when he accepted the tip, teeth catching his lip in a wider grin. The cash wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as the look on his face. He made sure to tuck that away later for when he was feeling miserable about all of this.

Klara, likely either sensing she wasn’t in control anymore or simply getting bored, pressed herself against Raihan’s arm and dragged him away. Piers rolled his hips and watched their backs disappear in the crowd, pleased with himself.

Okay. He had his fun. He could start getting over Raihan, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise this is a kbnz fic what the fuck am i doing


	10. Chapter 10

“That’s my roommate,” Raihan said belatedly, still struck by the whole experience.

“Yeah, cat’s out of the bag, looks like,” Klara gave his backside a playful squeeze on their way out the door. She’d suggested taking a walk, otherwise Raihan was at risk to spend all night drooling over Piers, from the looks of it.

That was more connection than she had _ever_ seen Piers attempt to make with an audience. He had a reputation for being distant and enigmatic onstage—hard to reach, pulling his attention away from someone as soon as he had theirs. Focusing on one person like that, even when he was singing, was entirely out of character.

There was no way Raihan would let his jaw hit the floor like that for no reason, either, so Klara chose her words carefully.

“How well do you two know each other?” she asked carefully, using the side of her arm to push the crosswalk button.

“We kissed last night,” Raihan surrendered, almost on cue.

“Whoa.” So Piers was working faster than she thought. Klara stole a glance at Raihan and saw the tension between his eyebrows that advertised how not-well that kiss must have gone. Come to think of it, Piers did seem to be gritting his teeth when they saw him.

“So, you know him?” He sounded so wounded.

“For a long time. He might be my best friend,” Klara chewed the inside of her cheek. Raihan would probably tell her whatever happened if she just asked, but the way he withered with every new mention of Piers, she wondered if she was ready to hear it. They crossed the street.

“So, the night you slept over?”

“I knew he’d moved to Hollywood, but seriously, what are the odds?” Klara filled the brief silence with a nervous laugh. “I ran into him after you fell asleep.”

“He knows, then.”

“Hm?”

“About you and I.”

“I think he put two and two together, yeah.”

Man, he was walking fast. She was losing her breath just trying to match his stride. Klara enjoyed hearing about the chaos of a tumultuous relationship, but with the sobering way Raihan was bleeding all over the sidewalk like this, she couldn’t just let this continue and feel good about it. Reaching for his arm again, she stopped him.

“Let’s chat in my car for a bit.”

Raihan nodded, and after that they didn’t say anything until they got inside. The back seat was more comfortable, so Klara pushed the passenger-side chair forward so Raihan could have some room to stretch his legs.

“So, you kissed last night?”

“Is that okay?”

“What—you mean with _me?_ Yeah, I don’t care,” Klara felt fidgety and self-conscious. Her relationship with Raihan had taken a different turn than expected, but if he was thinking about things like _fidelity_ , then they clearly weren’t on the same page.

“We’re not dating.”

“We’re going on dates,” Raihan rubbed the side of his face. “And we’re texting late into the night every night, you’re kissing me every other time we hang out, you’re holding my hand right now.” Raihan gave hers a squeeze and she felt her face burning hot with shame. It took a lot of restraint not to pull away. “We’re _not_ dating?”

“I—okay, you have a point, but—one thing at a time,” Klara took a deep breath. “Why do you look like you’re about to cry telling me you kissed him?”

He told her everything. Raihan had already unloaded two years worth of baggage onto her when they talked about Oleana, but now he was filling in the gaps with Piers. Meeting him. That first night, when he made him food and laughed with him until he felt human enough to get some sleep. Running into him in the hallway the next morning, hearing him singing to the sunrise a few weeks later. Going to the gas station. Meeting Sonia and Leon. Making a mistake and running away.

“And you just left?” Klara’s eyes were cast elsewhere, processing.

“Yeah.”

“Why? Everything was going so well, from what it sounds like.”

“That’s the thing. It was going _too_ well,” Raihan’s voice wavered. “I don’t know if I like _him,_ or just the idea of someone caring about me right now. I’m worried that I’m just chasing that feeling, you know,” he fingered the zipper on his jacket, “of being cared for. And what happens when I realize I’m only taking that from him because he was the first person to offer it? I’m no better than Oleana at that point.”

“Raihan, I don’t think—”

“I don’t even know if I _know how_ to be in a relationship right now. How fast is too fast? How slow is too slow? I thought I did everything right last time, and I still wasn’t… I wasn’t…”

“That wasn’t your fault, she was using you!”

“And what if I’m using _him?_ She did it for two years before she even realized it! I can’t possibly have moved on already. I’m just latching onto the first person to take interest in me so I can feel whole again.”

“Raihan!”

Klara couldn’t find the words fast enough. He just kept talking, spiraling. Trying to show himself how badly he could spin it and fault himself for caring about anyone or anything. Villainizing himself for being hurt. She knew exactly what every step of the process looked like.

Klara’s eyes welled up and her throat closed before she could face him. Raihan saw this and froze, searching for what he did wrong. Klara grabbed him by the shoulders with urgency and forced herself to look into his eyes.

“Listen to me, okay? You’re not doing any of that with h-him. That’s what—I’m,” her voice faltered. Hiccupping gasps followed shortly after and she gritted her teeth, determined to form the words out loud. “That’s. What I’m doing. To you.”

Her eyes stung when she tried to blink the tears away. They rolled down her face to leave murky, black streaks of disturbed makeup streaming down her cheeks.

“You’re the first one that didn’t just wanna sleep with me, so I thought, ‘I’ll just see how much I can get away with,’ you know?” Klara pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself with her eyes cast down, back against the window.

When she’d initially confronted Raihan, the plan was to sleep with him and provide the kind of girlfriend experience he would need to get over his ex. Once he was feeling better, she’d cut ties and move onto the next person; same way she’d been doing for years. She had already helped all kinds of people move on to find the loves of their lives. It made her feel like she had some good to do in this world.

But Raihan hadn’t wanted to sleep with her. A little derivative from her master plan, she’d thought, but nothing more than a road bump. She could still give him the attention he needed to heal safely while keeping her clothes on. The only problem was that he started to reciprocate that attention, asking about her day, taking genuine interest in her life and career, keeping her company during long editing sessions…

And then he spelled it all out for her like that.

_I’m worried that I’m just chasing that feeling, you know._

_I don’t even know if I_ know how _to be in a relationship right now._

_I’m just latching onto the first person to take interest in me so I can feel whole again._

“I was in your position, once. Sort of,” she spoke after a period of silence and a shaky, wet sigh. “Don’t be like me, Raihan. Don’t run away from a chance to heal from it, okay?”

“What? Klara, what are you even talking about?” His eyes were searching for answers on her face. He wasn’t going to find any.

“I can’t—I can’t get into all my bullshit right now. Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” she smiled tearfully. “The first relationship after a bad one is the hardest part. Trying to remember how to act. Unlearning bad habits. Learning how to trust someone, how to trust your own judgement again, that kinda stuff takes a ton of work.”

She laid her hands in her lap.

“I never did any of it. You still have a chance to. Don’t hold your heart hostage like this just ‘cause you’re scared, okay? Can you—can you swear on that?”

“Only if you look me in the eye first,” he said solemnly.

“I’ve made a mess of us,” she lamented. “Went and spoiled it. I’m so sorry.”

Fully ashamed of herself, Klara dared to face him. Raihan hesitated for a few beats before opening his arms to her, and she edged forward into them.

“I think you’re really cool, actually. That was real brave.” He rubbed her back. “This is the kinda stuff I do for my friends,” he hesitated, a sleepy mix of alcohol and weed and general emotional wear quieting his voice, “do you think we could be friends?”

The fraying string keeping her together snapped, and Klara wept without fanfare all over his shirt.

“Yeah,” she managed. “I think so. I hope so.”

* * *

The full impact of the edible finally hit her when they stumbled into his bed. With her heels abandoned somewhere in his room, they were wrapped up in each other and musing about some dog they both follow on social media. Klara had her arms thrown loosely over him while he used her chest as a pillow and laid on his stomach, thumbing through his phone. The lights were off, she had a hand in his hair, and the only sound in the room was the intimate tones in their voices.

“This is gonna sound so weird,” she prefaced. “But I feel so—I dunno— _safe_ right now?”

“Me too,” he murmured, “not that weird.”

Klara let her hands skate over his back.

“I feel like it would be different, now. Since we’re definitely just friends.”

“I was kind of thinking the same thing.”

“ _Were_ you?” her brows shot up. “You want to?”

“...Yeah. If you want. We might as well.”

Feeling insulated in his bedroom and under his weight, Klara nudged him. His eyes flicked up to mirror the curious fire in hers.

“Eh, why not? Just this once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ten chapters! over 20k words! i've never written anything this long before. thanks for sticking around.
> 
> klara's little "arc" should be wrapping up here pretty soon, but she'll still be around in one way or another because i've just grown too fond of her to let her go, lol.


	11. Chapter 11

“Anyway, guys, thanks so much for just chilling with me and K1NG today! We had a blast checking out the new WoW expansion with subs this morning. I know it was earlier than usual, so I appreciate you if you stopped by. Next stream will be tomorrow, usual time, not sure what we’ll be doing, but it’ll be something fun. Seeya then!”

Raihan blew his signature kiss to the camera and ended the stream. He watched his face disappear from the screen and was left with nothing but the game menu and Leon’s voice coming in over Discord.

“You’re yawning, dude,” he chuckled.

“Am I?” Raihan shaped his words around another yawn, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know how you do these morning streams, mate. Getting up at nine almost killed me.”

“You should do it more often, make your streams more accessible to European viewers. Your audience would grow a lot more.”

“Eh, I guess. That’s not really my style, though,” Raihan’s expression flattened. The bones in his wrists and between his shoulders cracked and popped when he threw his arms back to stretch. “Kind of a night owl. I just don’t give off the same energy in the morning.”

“Think of what it’d do for your channel, though! I bet you could double your sub count. Especially since you’re from the UK. I know whenever Sonia and I stream we get way more engagement from that part of the world than when it’s just me.”

“Haha, I bet, man. Alright, I’m gonna go take a nap and catch up on the hours I missed. I’ll message you later!”

“...Yeah! Get some rest.”

Raihan left the call and placed his headphones back on his desk. Leon always had the best intentions with stuff like this, and he had admittedly learned a lot about their lucrative careers from him over the years, but Raihan really didn’t want to hear it right now.

Leon had only been going live for two months and he was already hitting outrageous numbers, close to twenty thousand views per stream; meanwhile, Raihan’s audience, as a streamer of four years, danced somewhere in the six-thousand range. He knew that the vast majority of Leon’s audience were coming from YouTube, where he was basically the biggest star in gaming for over a decade. He also knew that Leon was a talented and charismatic guy with a heart of gold that brought a unique energy and edge to everything he did, and that there probably wouldn’t be another content creator like him for a long time. Still, to watch him try something on a whim and blow up with even more success than he had already, while Raihan was spending years carefully and gradually building a community for himself…that would be hard on anybody, right?

Before pursuing streaming, Raihan had taken a step back from YouTube as his years-long contract with MacroNet had expired in his early twenties. He remembered being relieved to have the liberty to make whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, on whatever platform he wanted. Going live made him feel more connected to the people that loved him and looked up to him. His uploads—usually just trimmed down recordings of his livestreams—started to feel more authentic, less scripted, and there wasn’t a decision he was happier with than his migration to streaming. In recent weeks he’d even been thinking about posting some non-gaming content on the channel again, like vlogs and behind-the-scenes videos, to show his community a little more of who he was and what he was up to. It was nice to have a place where he could entertain and have fun for the sake of entertaining and having fun, rather than needing to weave an ad read or a sponsored product into a gaming video that took days to edit down.

He loved Leon, and he loved seeing him do well. Having him around on Twitch meant that they could hang out together more, and a lot of times it reminded him of when they used to make videos of them running around in Minecraft or racing for shinies in Sun and Moon. But Leon entering Raihan’s domain also meant that there was once again a concrete, numerical way for Raihan to compare himself to him, which, like any competition with Leon, was always a losing game.

It also meant that Leon’s legion of fans had more access to him, and that they could remind him of his losing streak whenever they wanted. Raihan’s mods worked around the clock to keep things civil, but they couldn’t control who commented on his photos on Instagram, or what people said about him on Twitter. He saw those kinds of things so frequently that they had sunk into his head and started breeding hurting words in him, waiting until he was at his lowest and whispering poisonous thoughts to him. Was Leon embarrassed by the numbers Raihan was putting out? Did he feel bad for him? Is that why he felt like he needed to hold Raihan’s hand through every stream? Was he burdened with trying to help him get to the next level with his career, for fear that he’d fall too far behind?

Searching his name every night before bed was a toxic habit.

There he went again. Reaching too far into his own head and getting bitten by what he found. Mood sufficiently soured, he figured the apartment could use some sprucing up. He was on his hands and knees pulling cleaning supplies out from under the sink when he heard Piers’s boots thumping down the hallway.

“Heading out?” Raihan looked up to see Piers fidgeting with his hair. It was too early for him to be heading to work, and he’d just been to the store the other day, so he was curious to see where he was off to. “You look cute.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” he cast his eyes aside, fingering the charm on the choker around his neck. Raihan indulged himself in the flush dusting his cheeks. All Raihan had to do was make eye contact these days and Piers would turn pink, he wasn’t sure why. Fortunately, Piers hadn’t gathered that he had a similar effect on him whenever he smiled. Any flash of teeth brought him right back to that night a few weeks ago at the bar and sent Raihan’s stomach in circles.

“...Gonna go get somethin’ to eat with Klara for a bit before practice,” Piers continued, likely meaning to fill the silence left by the two of them staring at each other. They had reverted back to not crossing paths often, since all of that went down. Raihan respected every inch of distance that Piers put between them after the precarious near-end of their friendship, but he missed the moments when he could chat with him after work or help him bring his groceries upstairs. He hoped they were headed in that direction again soon.

“You’ve been practicing a lot, is something coming up soon?” he asked, hoping Piers would indulge in his curiosity just to see him for a moment longer. Piers, naturally, readjusted his fringe, which did not need adjusting.

“Got a show comin’ up,” he revealed humbly, but Raihan could sense the veiled excitement rising to the surface like steam. Sounded like a big deal.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, uh, sorry, ‘m already late. Let’s catch up tonight, yeah?”

Raihan’s “sure thing!” chased Piers’s back as he scurried out the door. He felt guilty for keeping him, but he couldn’t help himself sometimes. Connecting with Piers just put him in a good mood.

At first, he was content to clean in silence. Starting with the balcony, he emptied the ashtray and dusted everything down with a rag, moving on to the vacuuming and mopping the floors from the sitting room to the kitchen. There wasn’t much to do in between there, Piers usually cleaned the stove every few days, so all the counters and cabinets got a good wipe-down and he moved on.

The bathroom was probably the most cluttered and chaotic room in the house based solely on the amount of _things_ lining the limited shelf space. Every six or so months, Raihan went through all the PR cosmetics and skincare that hungry companies sent him—most of which he had no idea how to use, didn’t like, or didn’t need—and from the way things were looking, it was time. Piers’s allotted shelves were similarly cluttered, but everything he had looked like a well-curated, tried-and-true routine. He ran his fingers over the faded labels on bulk-size, generic bottles of miscellaneous lotions and cleansers, a well-used but surprisingly neat-looking hairbrush, and a rogue bottle of olive oil that was there for some reason. The contrast between Piers’s shelves and his own was stark enough that he could take comfort in the simplicity of his roommate’s belongings. Piers knew what he liked and stuck to it, rather than chasing the next big thing or using whatever showed up in his inbox just because it was there.

Okay. If he was going to stand in the washroom and caress Piers’s things in silence, he needed some background noise to get back on track. On a whim, he pulled up his texts and scrolled up until he reached the Bandcamp link Piers had sent him a few weeks ago.

* * *

“You’re late!”

“So are you,” Piers didn’t entertain her for even a second. “I was behind you on the motorway.”

“So? You weren’t here when I got here,” Klara grinned, taking pleasure in being difficult for no reason. “So you’re late.”

“Good Lord,” he rolled his eyes, “fine, I’m buyin’, then, yeah?” He should have expected that she would floor it if it meant saving twenty quid on some fish tacos.

They tucked themselves into their usual corner next to the trash can and shot the shit for a while over a shared plate of crisps, their main entrees both long gone with nothing but crinkled food paper remaining.

“How’re you and your man?” Piers took a swig of his energy drink.

“My what?”

“Your man. Raihan. You two’re still seein’ each other, right? Saw him on your feed the other day.”

Klara sat back on her side of the booth with her arms folded, brows pinched together with a quizzical expression.

“I mean, we’re hanging out, yeah, but we’re just friends.”

“I think he’s a good fit for you.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a couple of teenagers getting close and cozy a few tables away. He remembered a time when he could love clumsily like that, without being so prickly and jaded about every little thing.

“Eh, no thanks. We already talked about it, we’re just friends. Plus, he likes you, anyway, and I know you fancy him.” Piers winced.

“...What’s stoppin’ you from tryin’? It’s been almost four years, yanno.” He kept his eyes off of her, using his thumbnail to chip nail polish off of his fingers.

“Not sure what you’re talking about.” Klara’s voice froze all the air around them. Maybe highlighting her emotional baggage to dodge confronting his own wasn’t the best play. But he had committed to it now, so he kept pushing.

“C’mon, Klar, don’t you think it’s time to start movin’ on from her?” Piers challenged, still not keen on facing her outright. “You can’t do this forever.”

Klara’s palm hit the table hard when she stood, alerting everyone else in the small dining area to the scene she was about to cause.

“Fuck you,” her voice wavered, and Piers looked up to see tears in her eyes. “I fucked him. Right after you put on your slutty little display at the bar, I took him back to your apartment and fucked him.”

Klara stormed off and slammed the door behind her, leaving all eyes in the restaurant to start at the door, and then make their way back to him. He sighed and drained his energy drink. Took his time cleaning up their trash and boxing up their leftovers before dragging his feet out the door after her.

She was, predictably, leaned against her car in the car park, with red eyes and black mascara streaking down her cheeks, lipstick staining the butt of a cigarette between her fingers. She held out her pack to him as he approached.

“Took you long enough!” she huffed, indignant.

“Wanted t’give you some space,” Piers accepted her offer and pulled a cigarette from the box, eyeing it critically. “You’re still smokin’ these? What’re you, twelve?”

“Piss off,” Klara laughed, fishing a lighter out of her pocket. “The menthol’s nice, and I like crushing the little bead. You should try it.”

Piers admitted to himself that the menthol bead in the filter did make a satisfying _crunch_ when he popped it.

“Sorry for givin’ out unwanted advice,” he blew smoke out of the side of his mouth.

“Sorry for being so fucking _damaged_ all the time,” Klara snorted, looking up at the crackling telephone wires overhead. “You’re right, it may be time for me to get over it, but tangling myself in whatever’s going on with you and your hot gamer roommate isn’t the place to start.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Piers chuckled darkly. “Guess not.”

“He likes you a lot, Piers. Now may not be a good time, but give him a chance, alright? He’s a good guy.” Klara’s brows shot up when she saw herself in the reflection of her window, wiping away her smoky tears with her free hand.

“Maybe. We’ll see.” Piers handed her the napkin he’d shoved into their takeaway bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE PIERS AND RAIHAN WILL LIKE ACTUALLY INTERACT SOON THIS IS A KBNZ FIC I SWEAR!! I SWEAR!!!!!!


End file.
